Bye Bye Russian Translations.
Edit: I mean, who would support translations of a language where you're software almost 100% gets pirated.
Edit 2: Downvote, without a comment? That's not what i expected from HN.
Edit: I mean, who would support translations of a language where you're software almost 100% gets pirated.
Edit 2: Downvote, without a comment? That's not what i expected from HN.
My former girlfriend is from Estonia and speaks Russian natively.
I have colleagues who are Ukrainian and speak Russian primarily.
End result? People learned English.
Lots of people in Moldova speak Russian bilingual too. Russian is commonly spoken in Kazakhstan - even Russian courses in the universities.
Overall for many Russian is a decent choice to have a produce localized to or search for information in general. Like in your case - compare it to Estonian where the native speakers are fewer than 1.5 million (even, when you include all age groups) - a lot smaller market, harder to localize due to lack of translators, etc.
You've just lost the vast majority of the market who NEED Russian translations to use your software.
I imagine most Russian speakers outside of Russia, who buy software, would also have an least some proficiency in either English, French or another supported language.
Even though I haven't kept up with my French, I could probably manage to use a French version of Windows. It's going to be harder, but not impossible.
Language nerds can be as weird/passionate as tech nerds. Plenty of people who will translate things for either language politics reasons (dislike of English as the lingua franca) or for fun.