Home > Internationalization and localization
Internationalization and localization are means of adapting products such as publications or software for non-native environments, especially other nations and cultures. Internationalization is often abbreviated as I18N (or i18n or I18n), by IBM and others, where the number 18 refers to the number of letters omitted. "Localization" is often abbreviated L10N in the same manner. Both notions are sometimes collectively termed globalization (G11N), but that word has a more common meaning. Also "P13n" for personalization and "R3h" for reach, as in the reach of a website across countries and markets.Focal points of internationalization and localization efforts include:
- Date/time format ( UTC in internationalized environments),
- Currency,
- Language (alphabets, numerals and left-to-right script vs. right-to-left) ( Unicode),
- Profanity,
- Names and titles,
- SSN and passports,
- Telephone numbers, addresses and international postal codes,
- Weights and measures.
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. Subjects unique to localization include:
- Language translation,
- Special support for certain languages such as East Asian languages,
- Local customs,
- Morals,
- Local contentContent can mean Comfort and a feeling of satisfaction Creations, as in open content or free content. In narrative art such as many novels and movies, content is often the subject of the plot or the events and characters contained within. In this and in ms,
- SymbolA symbol or (in many senses) token is a representation of something — an idea, object, concept, quality, etc. Nature of symbols A symbol can be a material object whose shape or origin is related, by nature or convention, to the thing it represents: for ins,
- AestheticsAesthetics (or esthetics is a branch of philosophy dealing with the nature of beauty. The word aesthetics was first used by German philosopher Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten, who helped to establish the study of aesthetics as a separate philosophical field,
- Cultural value s and social context .
1 Difficulties
In making software products, internationalization and localization pose challenging tasks for developers, particularly if the software is not designed from the beginning with these concerns in mind. A common practice is to separate textual data and other environment-dependent resources from the program code. In this way, supporting a different environment, ideally, only requires change in those separate resources without any code modification; thus, the task is greatly simplified.
The development team needs someone who understands foreign languages and cultures and has a technical background; such a person may be difficult to find. Moreover, the duplication of resources could be maintenance nightmare. For instance, if a message displayed to the user in one of several languages is modified, all of the translated versions must be changed. Software libraries that aid this task are available, such as Gettextgettext is the GNU internationalization (i18n) library. It is very useful for writing multi-lingual programs. The latest version is 0. Gettext homepage http://www. org/software/gettext/gettext. and Hurricane.
Since free softwareThis article refers to free software as defined by the Free Software Foundation. For software available free of charge, see Freeware. The term free software refers to software which, once obtained, can be used, copied, studied, modified and redistributed. can be freely modified and redistributed it is also more apt to be internationalized. Most proprietary software is not translated into languages that are not considered to be economically viable. A project that has been translated into over 70 languages is KDEKDE K D esktop E nvironment) is a free desktop environment and development platform built with Trolltech's Qt toolkit. It runs on most Unix and Unix-like systems, such as Linux, BSD and Solaris. There are also ports to Mac OS X using its X11 layer and Mic.
