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Internationalization("I18n")
The Localization Industry Standards Association (LISA) defines internationalization as follows:

Internationalization is the process of generalizing product so that it can handle multiple languages and cultural conventions without the need for re-design. Internationalization takes place at the level of program design and document development


Localization("L10n")
The Localization Industry Standards Association (LISA) defines localization as follows:

Localization involves taking a product and making it linguistically and culturally appropriate to the target locale (country/region and language) where it will be used used and sold.


Globalization("G11n")
The Localization Industry Standards Association (LISA) defines globalization as follows:

Globalization addresses the business issues associated with taking a product global. In the globalization of high-tech products this involves integrating localization throughout a company, after proper internationalization and product design, as well as marketing, sales, and support in the world market.


Translation
The difference between translation and localization can be defined as follows:

Translation is only one of the activities in localization; in addition to translation, a localization project includes many other tasks such as project management, software engineering, testing, and desktop publishing.


Enabling
The enabling is one of process in product I18n and L10n.

Altering program code to handle input, display, and editing of bidirectional or East Asian languages, such as Arabic and Japanese, respectively.


Language Engineering
The following definition for Language Engineering was extracted from The Euromap Report published on behalf of the EUROMAP Consortium in 1998.

Language engineering is the application of knowledge of written and spoken language to the development of information, translation and communication systems, so that they can recognize understand, interpret, and generate human language. Language technologies include, for example, automatic or computer assisted translation, speech recognition and synthesis, speaker verification, semantic searches and information retrieval, text mining and fact extraction.


Quality
The ISO (ISO 8402: 1986, 3.1) defines'quality' as follows:

The totality of features and characteristics of a product or service that bear on its ability to satisfy stated or implied needs.


Quality Assurance
The ISO (ISO 8402: 1986, 3.6) defines 'quality assurance" as follows:

All those planned and systematic actions necessary to provide adequate confidence that a product or service will satisfy given requirements for quality.


Quality Control
The ISO (ISO 8402: 1986, 3.7) defines 'quality control' as follows:

The operational techniques and activities that are used to fulfill requirements for quality.


Level of Testing
The following testing activities are related to I18n process.
  • Internationalization Test
    • International support test
    • Localizability test
  • Localization Testing
    • Linguistic test
    • Cosmetic test
  • Functionality testing

Pilot Language
language that is localized before other languages; this language is used to define the localization process and to test for localizability issues.

Pilot-language localization is a good approach for large products that are localized in many target languages to speed up localizability code fixes. Localization for other languages should start once the UI is stable.


Locale
The collection of features of the user's environment that is dependent on language, country/region, and cultural conventions. The locale determines conventions such as sort order; keyboard layout; and date, time, number, and currency formats. In Windows, locales usually provide more information about cultural conventions than about languages.

nextEDGE Globalization Benefits
  • Faster time to market
    • Speed introduction of products to Asian market
  • Improved product quality
    • Deliver internationalized code based on industry best practices
    • Tested by engineers fluent in the target language
    • Tested in native environment n Improved engineering productivity
  • Internationalization knowledge shared as requested
    • Remove need for local engineers to build expertise in internationalization and localization
    • Leverage one code base for multiple languages
  • Reduced cost
    • Work on site with engineering teams
    • Faster resolution of product issues related to internationalization

Why outsourcing I18n and L10n?
Outsourcing this service provides high quality as well as a time and cost effective means of product localization and internationalization through onsite and/or offsite activities. It provides solutions for the following situations:
  • Better cost efficiency
    • hard to set up engineering team to work on I18n
    • different engineering skill sets are required from usual software development
  • Improve current I18n process
    • no reason to stop the product consolidation approach
    • inherit existing process and improve without reinventing the process from scratch
  • Improve productivity by working closely with product team
    • sharing I18n and L10n technology with customer
    • reduce the cost of future product development