Why are Software Localization Best Practices important?

Software Localization Best Practices to make applications accessible to all
Image by Megan Rexazin from Pixabay

Imagine you are at your vacation destination trying to buy a ticket from a subway kiosk or make a purchase at a self-service checkout station.  Though you have the basic knowledge to converse in the local language, you lack the confidence to fully comprehend the written language on the screen in front of you.  This experience leaves you apprehensive and anxious about whether you made the right selections. Well, you are not alone. A recent consumer survey collected from over twenty-nine countries finds that 76% of customers prefer purchasing products in their own native language.

Global e-commerce is projected to surpass $7 trillion worldwide by 2025. Among the fastest growth are coming from Asia-Pacific region and South America, a fact that online retailers should include in their business plans. To expand globally, your application and website must provide support for regional customers.  Allowing the customer to view their selection and make purchase decisions with confidence will increase sales and attract more users to your site.

It is challenging to scale up product features without significantly increasing development costs. Following these software localization best practices guidelines will reduce engineer complexity to support multiple regions.

Software Localization where to start
Image by Cloé Gérard from Pixabay

Where to Start?

The first step is to understand software localization best practices is the terminology used in the software industry.

Terminology

Terminology overview adapted from Adobe Globalization Guidelines

Globalization – Globalization is broken down into two parts. Business Globalization and Software Globalization.

  • Business Globalization – Involves e-commerce and performing business functions across countries and regional borders. Planning and coordination are essential for the team in Marketing, Legal, Taxation, Fulfilment, Sales, and Customer Support.
  • Software Globalization – It refers to the process of adapting software applications to work effectively in multiple languages and cultural environments. This process involves translating the user interface, adapting the software design to accommodate multiple character sets, and ensuring the software works correctly with various regional settings and preferences. The goal of software globalization is to create applications that are accessible and useful for users from all over the world.

In this article, we will deep-dive into Software Globalization, in particular software localization best pratices

  • Software Globalization
    • Internationalization – Software internationalization involves the development of a product, application, or document content so that it can be localized for a region. The key is to design the software program without requiring significant changes to the architecture to support multiple regions. The technique of internationalized software is dependent on the programing language and engineering platform.
    • Localization – Software localization is the process of adapting the user interface to the language and culture of users in the targeted market. It includes localization of date and time formats, currency, and text.
    • Translations – Software translation is the process of translating text from one language to another.  The term translation is commonly confused with software localization. Translation is defined in this context as the translation of text from one world language to another. It is a subset of function when referring to the localization process, which includes data formats commonly used in the region.
    • Culturalization – Software culturalization is a feature built into a product that serves a particular region. For example, Halloween design templates are available for all users but are primarily used in the United States, where the holiday is celebrated.
software localization road sign
Image by Erika Varga from Pixabay

What to consider?

Text Translations

Most professional translators take the following into consideration when translating text written in a source language and retargeting for another language.  Clarity and accuracy require domain knowledge of the subject matter. Is the text from a technical article for a medical journal, a computing magazine, or a legal document?  These specialized documents require trained linguists to translate and review the text for accuracy and legal verbiage. If an article is related to marketing, does it include cultural references that might get lost with direct text translation?

For example, the phrase “Once in a Blue Moon” is used to describe a rare occurrence or an event that rarely happens.  Machine translation engines, such as Google Translate, or human translators who are not familiar with this English phrase may provide a direct translation of the color of the moon.

Localization includes Date, Time, Number, Currency, and Sorting.

In the United States, the start of the week is Monday.  Do you know the start of the week is Saturday in Egypt and Sunday in Ecuador? Even when regions and countries share the same spoken language, the data formats may differ. See the example below for the currency format in the French Canada region compared to France. Here are other data formats to consider when thinking about software localization best practices.

Numbers

Language (Region/Country)Numbers display in Standard Format
English (US)12,345,678.90
French (France)12 345 678,90
German (Germany)12.345.678,90

Currency

Language (Region/Country)Currency
English (US)USD $12,345,678.90
English (Canada)C$12,345,678.90
French (Canada)12 345 678.90 C$
French (France)12 345 678,90 €
German (Germany)12.345.678,90 €

Date and Time

Language (Region/Country)Date and Time
English (US)03/26/2023, 4:30 PM
French (Canada)2023-03-26 16 h 30
French (France)26/03/2023, 16:30
German (Germany)26.03.2023, 16:30

Sorting

Different languages have their own rules for sorting order. While some languages may share the same character, word sort is different. For example, in Danish, the letter Æ is after Z, while Y and Ü are variants of the same letter. The sort order can be case-sensitive or insensitive. The rule may dictate whether it can ignore accents or not. 

Here are a few examples

LanguageLinguistic Sorting
EnglishAlphabetical order of letters, starting from A to Z
JapaneseIn Japanese text sorting, the standard sequence is as follows:

– Kanji characters are sorted based on their pronunciation using the gojūon, i.e., the Japanese phonetic order that groups syllables by their vowel sounds and the kana characters that represent them.
– Katakana characters are sorted next, again based on their pronunciation.
– Hiragana characters come next, sorted in the same way as katakana.
– Then come the alphabetic scripts, such as the Latin alphabet, sorted according to the usual alphabetical order.
Chinese (Simplified)Four different sorting methods depending on the purpose and the specific requirements:

– Stroke count sorting: This method sorts the characters based on the number of strokes used to write them. Characters with fewer strokes come first in the order.
– Radical-stroke sorting: This method combines the character radical (the common subpart of the character that gives it meaning) with the stroke count to determine the order. Characters with the same radical are grouped together, and within each group, they are sorted by stroke count.
– Pinyin sorting: This method uses the Pinyin romanization system to alphabetize Chinese characters according to their pronunciation
– Frequency sorting: This method sorts the characters based on their frequency of use in the modern Chinese language. Characters that are more commonly used come first, while those that are less used come later in the order.

Internationalization of Text Input

Regardless of the user interface language of your website or application, you must consider what type of data your user may want to provide. Let’s say you want visitors to register for a newsletter. Your customers may want to

  1. Enter their name with accented characters.
  2. Mailing address that includes a non-English script.
  3. Phone numbers that may contain 7 to 11 digits.

Internationalization of text input refers to the process of designing computer software and systems that can handle text input in various languages and scripts from around the world. Internationalization is the basic building block to support software localization. For example, in some languages, characters may be written from right to left, while in others, they are written from left to right. Some languages use non-Latin scripts, such as Chinese or Arabic, while others use diacritic marks, such as Vietnamese or Finnish.

Culturalization is built into the product, not an add-on

Designing software that is culturally sensitive involves more than just software localization. It requires a deep understanding of the cultural context in which the software will be used and incorporating that understanding into the product design from the very beginning. For example, your product supports emailing greetings and well wishes for special occasions. Keeping a database of holidays and special occasions on your product’s database will cause you to refactor code when product marketing requests to expand to more regions. Therefore, culturalization features must be built into the software product from the start rather than added on as an afterthought. This is because culturalization involves not only language translation and software localization but also the adaptation of software functionality and user interface design to meet the needs and expectations of specific cultural groups.

Image by Pexels from Pixabay

4 Engineering Best Practices

1. Begin your design with multilingual architecture

Here are some steps to begin your software design:

  1. Identify the languages and scripts that your software will need to support. Understand the different writing systems and input methods they use.
  2. Choose a character encoding standard that supports the languages and scripts you have identified. UTF-8 is a popular choice as it can handle almost any character from any language.
  3. Implement a language framework that allows for the easy addition and management of multiple languages. This may include developing a language file or database that can store text and other assets in different languages.
  4. Design a user interface that is flexible enough to accommodate different languages and scripts. Consider issues such as text expansion, right-to-left text direction, and localized icons and graphics.
  5. Use Unicode for text input and output. Avoid hard coding of language-specific text strings in the source code.

A well-designed architecture framework improves the software localization process.

2. Don’t invent the wheel!

There are many resources to support software internationalization and localization process. You don’t have to program all the features. There are paid and open-source libraries you can use.

Here are industry standards to start your journey:

3. Know your customers

Product managers, UI/UX designers, and the engineering team are aligned on the product’s targeted audience in the country it serves. The terminology and design styles used are appropriate for the region. Consider cultural differences such as color preferences, imagery, and symbols that might have different meanings in diverse cultures. For example, the color red in Western culture may represent caution, urgency, or love. In Chinese culture, red represents luck and prosperity. These can impact the usability of the software.

4. Test! Test! Test!

It’s important to conduct user testing with native speakers to ensure the software adheres to regional standards and conventions. This can help identify any language-specific issues and improve the software’s usability.

Tests should include these areas:

  • Internationalization tests:
    • Enter non-English characters in an input field
  • Localization test:
    • Does text display correctly? No corrupted characters.
    • Does the text flow and pagination follow hyphenation rules?
    • Do dates, times, numbers, and currency follow the regional convention?
  • Linguistics test:
    • Does the localized text phrasing read naturally for a native speaker? Does it follow the grammar rules?

Conclusion

Following these software localization best practices guidelines can help you design software and effectively support customers. Localized versions of your product are accessible and usable for a wider audience.

References