How Much Longer German Text Runs Than English
A button hard-coded to exactly fit "Save" in English breaks once the product is localized into German.
Per this subject's text-expansion guidance, roughly how much longer does German commonly run compared to English for the same meaning?
The correct answer is "30% or more longer."
This subject cites the specific figure: German, along with several other languages, routinely runs 30% or more longer than English for the same meaning, with compound nouns a common driver ("Datenschutzeinstellungen" versus "privacy settings"). A button sized exactly to its English text, with no slack, either truncates, wraps awkwardly, or breaks the layout once translated — which is exactly why containers should be designed around the longest realistic string, tested against a language known to expand, not just the source language.
The distractors don't match the cited figure: 5% understates the expansion enough that a tightly fitted English button would still likely survive translation, which isn't the point this subject is making; "roughly the same length" is the assumption that causes the bug in the first place, not a correct fact about German; and "twice as long, on average" overstates it well past the ~30%+ figure this subject actually cites.
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