Is My Software Ready for Localization? (Part 2)
By Willem Stoeller
Vice President

How do you determine if your software application is really localizable? Below are some guidelines that may assist you in assessing the localizability of your software:

• Does the software development environment support localization? For example, Perl script does not support an externalization mechanism for user interface components. Therefore, Perl is not a good choice for global software.



• All user-visible text strings, images and icons should be externalized by using standard constructs, for example, Windows resource files or Java resource bundles. Although the concept of externalization has been known and used for 10-15 years, it is the most common localizability issue. Any user interface elements not externalized cannot be translated.



• Do not use string concatenations. In other words, do not combine text strings to form larger text strings. Doing so causes serious translation problems, due to language-dependent word order.



• Ensure correct handling of dynamic messages. Dynamic messages have embedded variables such as “<filename>”. It is essential that translators have control over the placement of such variables within the string. Again, this is necessary to meet the correct word order requirements of the language.



• Can UI (User Interface) elements such as buttons and dialog boxes be resized? Due to horizontal text expansion (Western languages) or vertical text expansion (Asian languages), text in dialogs may become truncated or otherwise incorrectly displayed. In some cases (such as the localization of telephone interfaces), there is no extra screen real estate available for larger buttons and dialogs. In such cases, shorter next-best translations or abbreviations must be used.



• Font references used for the display of UI elements must also be externalized. This allows for the selection of a font appropriate to a particular language.



• Are translation limitations documented? These limitations typically include character-length limits on text strings and text strings that cannot be localized without impacting the functioning of the software.



• Assign responsibility for the preparation of a translation kit (set of resource files and instructions) to a member of the development team. These translation kits facilitate the handoff from the development team to the localization team.

All the above localizability factors need to be evaluated before the start of the actual software localization. One commonly-used technique for testing UI localizability is “pseudo localization.” (See also localizability testing at http://msdn.microsoft.com.)

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