In computing Computing is usually defined as the activity of using and developing computer technology, computer hardware and software. It is the computer-specific part of information technology. Computer science is the study and the science of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and their implementation and application in computer, internationalization and localization (also spelled internationalisation and localisation, see spelling differences In the early 18th century, English spelling was not standardized. Differences became noticeable after the publishing of influential dictionaries. Current British English spellings follow, for the most part, those of Samuel Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language , whereas many American English spellings follow Noah Webster's An American) are means of adapting computer software Software includes things such as websites, programs or video games, that are coded by programming languages like C or C++ to different languages and regional differences. Internationalization is the process of designing a software application so that it can be adapted to various languages and regions without engineering changes. Localization is the process of adapting internationalized software for a specific region or language by adding locale In computing, locale is a set of parameters that defines the user's language, country and any special variant preferences that the user wants to see in their user interface. Usually a locale identifier consists of at least a language identifier and a region identifier-specific components and translating text.
Due to their length, the terms are frequently abbreviated to the numeronyms Most commonly a numeronym is a word where the number is used to form an abbreviation i18n (where 18 stands for the number of letters between the i and the n in internationalization, a usage coined at DEC Digital Equipment Corporation was a pioneering American company in the computer industry. It is often referred to within the computing industry as DEC . Its PDP and VAX products were arguably the most popular minicomputers for the scientific and engineering communities during the 1970s and 1980s. DEC was acquired in June 1998 by Compaq, which in the 1970s or 80s[1]) and L10n respectively. The capital L in L10n helps to distinguish it from the lowercase i in i18n.
Some companies, like Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is a United States-based multinational computer technology corporation that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of software products for computing devices. Headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA, its most profitable products are the Microsoft Windows operating system and the Microsoft Office suite, IBM International Business Machines Corporation, abbreviated IBM and nicknamed "Big Blue" , is a multinational computer technology and IT consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States. The company is one of the few information technology companies with a continuous history dating back to the 19th century. IBM and Sun Microsystems Sun Microsystems, Inc. is a multinational vendor of computers, computer components, computer software, and information technology services, founded on February 24, 1982. The company is headquartered in Santa Clara, California (part of Silicon Valley), on the former west campus of the Agnews Developmental Center, use the term globalization for the combination of internationalization and localization.[2][3] Globalization can also be abbreviated to g11n.[4]
This term is also known as Native Language Support or NLS.
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Scope
Focal points of internationalization and localization efforts include:
- Language
- Computer-encoded text
- Alphabets/scripts; most recent systems use the Unicode Unicode is a computing industry standard allowing computers to consistently represent and manipulate text expressed in most of the world's writing systems. Developed in tandem with the Universal Character Set standard and published in book form as The Unicode Standard, Unicode consists of a repertoire of more than 100,000 characters, a set of code standard to solve many of the character encoding A character encoding system consists of a code that pairs a sequence of characters from a given character set with something else, such as a sequence of natural numbers, octets or electrical pulses, in order to facilitate the transmission of data (generally numbers and/or text) through telecommunication networks and/or storage of text in computers problems.
- Different systems of numerals In linguistics, a term for specific words in a natural language that represents a number
- Writing direction which is e.g. left to right in German German (Deutsch, [dɔʏtʃ] ) is a West Germanic language, thus related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. It is one of the world's major languages and the most widely spoken mother tongue in the European Union. Around the world, German is spoken by approximately 105 million native speakers and also by about 80 million non-native, right to left in Persian Persian is an Iranian language within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is widely spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Bahrain and has official-language status in the first three countries under different names. Persian is a pluricentric language. The Persian language has been a medium for literary and, Hebrew 1United States Census 2000 PHC-T-37. Ability to Speak English by Language Spoken at Home: 2000. Table 1a and Arabic Arabic is a Central Semitic language, thus related to and classified alongside other Semitic languages such as Hebrew and Syriac. In terms of speakers, Arabic is the largest member of the Semitic language family. It is spoken by more than 280 million people as a first language and by 250 million more as a second language. Most native speakers live
- Spelling Spelling is the writing of a word or words with the necessary letters and diacritics present in an accepted standard order. It is one of the elements of orthography and a prescriptive element of an alphabetic language. Most spellings attempt to approximate a transcribing of the sounds of the language into alphabetic letters; however, completely variants for different countries where the same language A language is a system for encoding information. In its most common use, the term refers to so-called "natural languages" — the forms of communication considered peculiar to humankind. In linguistics the term is extended to refer to the human cognitive facility of creating and using language. Essential to both meanings is the is spoken, e.g. localization (en-US American English , also known as United States English or U.S. English, is a set of dialects of the English language used mostly in the United States. Approximately two thirds of native speakers of English live in the United States, en-CA, en-GB-oed) vs. localisation (en-GB British English, or UK English , is the broad term used to distinguish the forms of the English language used in the United Kingdom from forms used elsewhere. There is confusion whether the term refers to English as spoken in the British Isles or to English as spoken in Great Britain, though in the case of Ireland, there are further distinctions, en-AU)
- Text processing differences, such as the concept of capitalization Capitalization is writing a word with its first letter as a majuscule (upper-case letter) and the remaining letters in minuscules (lower-case letters), in those writing systems which have a case distinction. The term is also used more broadly for the choice of case in text which exists in some scripts and not in others, different text sorting Collation is the assembly of written information into a standard order. One common type of collation is called alphabetisation, though collation is not limited to ordering letters of the alphabet. Collating lists of words or names into alphabetical order is the basis of most office filing systems, library catalogs and reference books rules, etc
- Input
- Enablement of keyboard shortcuts on any keyboard layout[5]
- Graphical representations of text (printed materials, online images containing text)
- Spoken (Audio)
- Subtitling Subtitles are textual versions of the dialog in films and television programs, usually displayed at the bottom of the screen. They can either be a form of written translation of a dialog in a foreign language, or a written rendering of the dialog in the same language, with or without added information to help viewers who are deaf and hard-of- of film Film encompasses individual motion pictures, the field of film as an art form, and the motion picture industry. Films are produced by recording images from the world with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or special effects and video Video is the technology of electronically capturing, recording, processing, storing, transmitting, and reconstructing a sequence of still images representing scenes in motion
- Computer-encoded text
- Culture Culture is a term that has different meanings. For example, in 1952, Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn compiled a list of 164 definitions of "culture" in Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions. However, the word "culture" is most commonly used in three basic senses:
- Images and colors: issues of comprehensibility and cultural appropriateness
- Names and titles
- Government assigned numbers (such as the Social Security number In the United States, a Social Security number is a nine-digit number issued to U.S. citizens, permanent residents, and temporary (working) residents under section 205(c)(2) of the Social Security Act, codified as 42 U.S.C. § 405(c)(2). The number is issued to an individual by the Social Security Administration, an independent agency of the in the US, National Insurance number in the UK, Isikukood in Estonia) and passports
- Telephone numbers, addresses and international postal codes A postal code is a series of letters and/or digits appended to a postal address for the purpose of sorting mail
- Currency In monetary economics Currency can refer either to a particular currency, for example British Pounds or United States Dollars, or, to the coins and banknotes of a particular currency, which comprise the monetary base of a nation’s money supply. The other part of a nation’s money supply consists of money deposited in banks , ownership of which (symbols, positions of currency markers)
- Weights and measures The definition, agreement, and practical use of units of measurement have played a crucial role in human endeavour from early ages up to this day. Disparate systems of measurement used to be very common. Now there is a global standard, the International System of units, the modern form of the metric system. The SI has been or is in the process of
- Paper sizes
- Writing Conventions A convention is a set of agreed, stipulated or generally accepted standards, norms, social norms or criteria, often taking the form of a custom
- Date/time format, including use of different calendars
- Time zones (UTC Coordinated Universal Time is a time standard based on International Atomic Time (TAI) with leap seconds added at irregular intervals to compensate for the Earth's slowing rotation. Leap seconds are used to allow UTC to closely track UT1, which is mean solar time at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich in internationalized environments)
- Formatting of numbers (decimal points, positioning of separators, character used as separator)
- Any other aspect of the product or service that is subject to regulatory compliance The International Organisation for Standardisation produces international standards such as ISO17799. The International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) produces international standards in the electrotechnology area
The distinction between internationalization and localization is subtle but important. Internationalization is the adaptation of products for potential use virtually everywhere, while localization is the addition of special features for use in a specific locale. Internationalization is done once per product, while localization is done once for each combination of product and locale. The processes are complementary, and must be combined to lead to the objective of a system that works globally. Subjects unique to localization include:
- Language translation Translation is the interpreting of the meaning of a text and the subsequent production of an equivalent text, likewise called a "translation," that communicates the same message in another language. The text to be translated is called the source text, and the language that it is to be translated into is called the target language; the
- National varieties of languages (see language localization)
- Special support for certain languages such as East Asian languages
- Local customs
- Local content
- Symbols
- Order of sorting
- Aesthetics The term esthetics 1790-, derives from the German ästhetisch or the French esthétique, both derived from the Greek αισθητικός (aisthetikos) "esthetic-sensitive-sentient", from αίσθηση-αισθάνομαι (aisthese-aisthanomai) "to perceive-feel-sense"
- Cultural values Culture is a term that has different meanings. For example, in 1952, Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn compiled a list of 164 definitions of "culture" in Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions. However, the word "culture" is most commonly used in three basic senses: and social context The social environment , also known as the milieu, is the identical or similar social positions and social roles as a whole that influence the individuals of a group. The social environment of an individual is the culture that he or she was educated and/or lives in, and the people and institutions with whom the person interacts. A given social
Business Process for Internationalization Software
In order to Internationalize a product, it is important to look at a variety of markets that your product will foreseeably enter. Details such as field length for addresses, ability to make the zip code The ZIP code is the system of postal codes used by the United States Postal Service . The letters ZIP, an acronym for Zone Improvement Plan, are properly written in capital letters and were chosen to suggest that the mail travels more efficiently, and therefore more quickly, when senders use the code. The basic format consists of five numerical field optional to address countries that do not have zip codes, plus the introduction of new registration flows that adhere to local laws are just some of the examples that make internationalization a complex project.[6]
Coding Practice
The current prevailing practice is for applications to place text in resource strings which are loaded during program execution as needed. These strings, stored in resource files, are relatively easy to translate. Programs are often built to reference resource libraries depending on the selected locale data. One software library In computer science, a library is a collection of subroutines or classes used to develop software. Libraries contain code and data that provide services to independent programs. This allows the sharing and changing of code and data in a modular fashion. Some executables are both standalone programs and libraries, but most libraries are not that aids this is gettext.
Thus to get an application to support multiple languages one would design the application to select the relevant language resource file at runtime. Resource files are translated to the required languages. This method tends to be application-specific and at best, vendor-specific. The code required to manage date entry verification and many other locale-sensitive data types also must support differing locale requirements. Modern development systems and operating systems include sophisticated libraries for international support of these types.
Difficulties
While translating existing text to other languages may seem easy, it is more difficult to maintain the parallel versions of texts throughout the life of the product. For instance, if a message displayed to the user is modified, all of the translated versions must be changed. This in turn results in somewhat longer development cycle.
Many localization issues (e.g. writing direction, text sorting) require more profound changes in the software than text translation. For example, OpenOffice.Org OpenOffice.org , commonly known simply as OpenOffice, is an office application suite available for a number of different computer operating systems. It is distributed as free software and written using the GTK. It supports the ISO/IEC standard OpenDocument Format (ODF) for data interchange as its default file format, as well as Microsoft Office achieves this with compilation switches.
To some degree (e.g. for Quality assurance Quality assurance, or QA for short, refers to planned and systematic production processes that provide confidence in a product's suitability for its intended purpose. Refer to the definition by Merriam-Webster for further information . It is a set of activities intended to ensure that products satisfy customer requirements in a systematic,), the development team needs someone who understands foreign languages and cultures and has a technical background. In large societies with one dominant language/culture, it may be difficult to find such a person.
Cost vs benefit tradeoff
In a commercial setting, the benefit from localization is access to more markets. Some argue that the commercial case to localize products into multiple languages is very obvious, and that all is needed is a budgetary commitment from the producer to finance the considerable costs. It costs more to produce products for international markets, but in an increasingly global economy, supporting only one language/market is scarcely an option. Still, proprietary software localization is impacted by economically viability and usually lacks the ability for end users and volunteers to self-localize as is often the case in open-source environments.
Since open source software Open source software is defined as computer software for which the source code and certain other rights normally reserved for copyright holders are provided under a software license that meets the Open Source Definition or that is in the public domain. This permits users to use, change, and improve the software, and to redistribute it in modified can generally be freely modified and redistributed, it is more prone to internationalization. The KDE KDE (pronounced /ˌkeɪdiːˈiː/) is a free software project based around its flagship product, a desktop environment mainly for Unix-like systems. The goal of the project is to provide basic desktop functions and applications for daily needs as well as tools and documentation for developers to write stand-alone applications for the system. In project, for example, has been translated into over 100 languages.[7]
See also
- Bidirectional script support Bi-directional text is used as some writing systems of the world, notably the Arabic , Persian and Hebrew scripts, are written in a form known as right-to-left (RTL), in which writing begins at the right-hand side of a page and concludes at the left-hand side. This is different from the left-to-right (LTR) direction used by most languages in the
- CJK CJK is a collective term for Chinese, Japanese, and Korean, which constitute the main East Asian languages. The term is used in the field of software and communications internationalization
- Computer russification, localization into Russian language
- Game localization Game localization refers to the preparation of video games for other locales. This adaptation to the standards of other countries covers far more than simply translation of language. There are different areas, such as linguistic, cultural, hardware and software, legal differences, graphics identity and music
- Globalization Management System A globalization management system is a type of software for automating many parts of the human language translation process and maximizing translator efficiency. The ideal of a globalization management system is to automate all repeatable and non-essential work that can be done by software/systems and leaving only the creative work of translation
- Glocalization Glocalisation is a portmanteau word of globalization and localization. By definition, the term “glocal” refers to the individual, group, division, unit, organisation, and community which is willing and is able to “think globally and act locally.” The term has been used to show the human capacity to bridge scales (from local to global) and
- Input method editor An input method is an operating system component or program that allows users to enter characters and symbols not found on their input device. For instance, on the computer, this allows the user of keyboards to input Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Indic characters. On a mobile phone, this allows user using the keypad to enter Latin alphabet
- International Components for Unicode International Components for Unicode is an open source project of mature C/C++ and Java libraries for Unicode support, software internationalization and software globalization. ICU is widely portable to many operating systems and environments. It gives applications the same results on all platforms and between C/C++ and Java software. The ICU
- Language code
- Language industry
- Language localization
- Pseudolocalization, a software testing method for testing a software product's readiness for localization.
- Punycode, translating Unicode into the character sets for network host names
- Region code
- Separation of concerns
- Translation
External links
- Worldware Conference - Global Software Strategies
- I:B:Loc : Localization, Multilingual DTP and QA
Notes
- ^ "Glossary of W3C Jargon". World Wide Web Consortium. http://www.w3.org/2001/12/Glossary#I18N. Retrieved on 2008-10-13.
- ^ IBM Globalization web site
- ^ Microsoft Globalization Step-by-Step Guide
- ^ Wiktionary g11n definition
- ^ http://blog.i18n.ro/are-we-supposed-to-localize-keyboard-shortcuts/
- ^ Internationalizing a Product: Product Internationalization 101
- ^ For the current list see KDE.org
References
| Look up internationalization or localization in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. |
| Wikibooks has a book on the topic of FOSS Localization |
- .NET Internationalization: The Developer's Guide to Building Global Windows and Web Applications, Guy Smith-Ferrier, Addison-Wesley Professional, 7 August 2006. ISBN 0-321-34138-4
- A Practical Guide to Localization, Bert Esselink, John Benjamins Publishing, [2000]. ISBN 1-58811-006-0
- Lydia Ash: The Web Testing Companion: The Insider's Guide to Efficient and Effective Tests, Wiley, May 2, 2003. ISBN 0471430218
- Business Without Borders: A Strategic Guide to Global Marketing, Donald A. DePalma, Globa Vista Press [2004]. ISBN 978-0976516903
Categories: International trade | Technical communication | Translation | Business terms | International relations | Globalization | Word coinage | Transliteration | Linguistics | Information technology and development
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