Finale Forum

Normal macOS apps support "localization". If I change my language in System Preferences from English to Spanish, and if an app I am using supports Spanish, then the next time I launch that app, its text will be in Spanish. There is just one .app, with one license, which can run in multiple languages.

Is this (and I hope it is) the case with Spanish Finale? In other words, if I download Finale 26, do I get a Finale.app which will run in either language, localized like a normal macOS app? The marketing hype I have read from MakeMusic seems to refer to Spanish Finale as a separate product of some kind, which is confusing.

I don’t think so. My impression is that the Spanish Finale is a separate product, rather than one that can be localized.

Thank you, miker. Unfortunately, it looks as though you are correct. I just downloaded and installed both demos. The Spanish package is more megabytes, but it does not appear to include the English localization. When I launch it, the first two dialogs I see, asking for permission to access `Documents` and the microphone, appear with the first paragraph (generated by macOS) in English and the second paragraph (generated by Finale) in Spanish.

This must be embarassing to the engineers who developed Finale 26, because it looks like they were unaware of how to use the localization feature which Apple has built into macOS. But much more likely is that proper engineering was overridden by this odd and annoying "two apps" approach which was thought up by the marketing or product management people

They have missed so many other things, much simpler than that, that it comes as no surprise.

There are French, German, Italian versions of Finale (etc... ?). Each of them has been translated by local companies (IPE Music, Klemm,...) and is a separate application. Having a multilingual Finale looks like a good idea at first sight...but let's not forget that the MakeMusic team is rather small, the translations would require an important and reliable network of collaborations, it would make the program very heavy, the frequency of the updates would be slower and the different languages may not be evenly developed (quality wise).
I would rather have frequent updates in English (although it is not my mother language).

I see what you mean, Michel. I was not aware of these other language versions. So for some reason MakeMusic chose to do the Spanish version in-house or, maybe with a tighter relationship than they have with IPE Music, Klemm, etc. It is true that if they add, say, a new control with new text in an update, they should pass the update through their localizers before releasing. But that does not need to be done on the first such update. For example, non-English users would get new features in English until the next major revision. That may or may not be faster than waiting for another company to add the new feature, until which they would not have the new feature at all.

But you have convinced me that there is another side to the argument.

I don't know from the Mac, but maybe MakeMusic has no control over the Documents/microphone questions asked when installing. If you're installing Spanish Finale on English MacOS, then that behavior seems right.

It is probable that the MakeMusic team includes some Spanish speaking developers (not rare in the US), and considering the huge Spanish market, MM apparently thought it was a good investment to develop that version internally.

To @motet: Yes, that is the reason. Part of the dialog is generated by macOS, and that part only depends on your language setting in macOS.

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Well, against my better judgment, but succumbing to the $79 upgrade coupon, I bought the upgrade to Finale 26, from Spanish Finale. After my purchase, it directed me to download the English version. So instead I clicked "Authorize Finale" in the Spanish version, and it seemed to work – after relaunching Demo Spanish Finale 26 it did not prompt me to purchase and the "Ayuda (Help) > Deauthorize Finale" button was enabled. Out of curiousity, and since I sometimes might want to run in English, I then launched Demo Finale 26 (English) and it seems to be authorized too. So the good news is that, although it takes two application packages, purchasing a Finale 26 entitles you to use either English, Spanish or both.

I still think it's weird, and MakeMusic made extra work for themselves and confusion for users by not building both languages into one application package, in the normal Macintosh fashion as recommended by Apple.