Localization

L10n is the process of adapting the text and applications of a product or service to enable its acceptability for a particular cultural or linguistic market. Translation is the central activity of localization. Localization goes beyond literal translation, in addition to idiomatic language translation, numerous locale details such as currency, national regulations and holidays, cultural sensitivities, product or service names, gender roles, and geographic examples among many other details must all be considered. A successfully localized service or product is one that seems to have been developed within the local culture.

Localization primarily includes:

• Translating text content, software source code, web sites, or database content; machine translation may be used in early stages.
• Adjusting graphic and visual elements and examples to make them culturally appropriate
• Post-production quality control of content, systems and the integrated product

The localization market is focused on software, documentation (packaging information, technical booklets, user manuals, training equipment, etc.), web sites and applications.

Internationalization

I18n is planning and implementing products and services so that they can easily be localized for specific languages and cultures.

This process requires a combination of both international and technical expertise, and generally involves both deploying new systems and reengineering existing ones. Once the internationalized platform is in place, rollouts in new countries or cultures should be significantly more cost efficient, timely and market effective.

Internationalization may include:

• Creating illustrations for documents in which the text can easily be changed to another language and allowing expansion room for this purpose
• Allowing space in user interfaces (for example, hardware labels, help pages, and online menus) for translation into languages that require more space
• Creating print or web site graphic images so that their text labels can be translated inexpensively
• Leaving enough space in a brochure to drop in different length languages
• Separating the language elements from the graphic elements, or abstracting content from markup in a web application and software
• Using written examples that have global meaning
• Insuring that the tools and product can support international character sets
• For software, ensuring data space so that messages can be translated from languages with single-byte character codes (such as English) into languages requiring multiple-byte character codes (such as Japanese Kanji)

Globalization

Globalization is an approach to business strategy that aims to address all of the logistical and organizational challenges an enterprise faces as it expands its supporting content, assets and message across cultures and markets to new clients. Globalization incorporates internationalization and localization to achieve this goal.

Globalization describes a comprehensive process that incorporates, augments, and extends:

• Research on and identification of global markets
• Market validation and selection
• Identification and formalization of global business requirements
• Language translation and cultural integration (a.k.a. Internationalization and Localization)
• Identification of technology standards and solutions (format and structure)
• Identification of cross-market affinities (to enable marketing and technology asset reuse)
• Alignment with and support for Internationalization (i18n) and Localization (l10n) processes.