Over the last decade, as a Software Architect at Active Voice and as Director of Development at Saltmine , I've had a lot of opportunity to develop truly international programs and sites, in applications ranging from voice mail systems to troubleshooting tools. I'd like to share some of what I've learned. To be useful to a broad audience, I've tried to avoid delving too deeply into technical issues, either about programming or about human language. 10 tips on Internationalization and Localization 1. Understand the difference between internationalization and localization Internationalization is the up front work of building a system in such a way that it can be adapted to multiple locales.
Localization is the adaptation of a system for a particular locale.
If you have given sufficient thought up front to internationalization issues, each localization will be relatively straightforward. Conversely, an expert on internationalization may not have the language facility or the knowledge of a particular culture to perform a localization. Localization isn't just about language When most people think about localization, the first thing that comes to mind is translation. Of course, that is an important part of localization, but plenty of localization issues can arise even among countries with a common language. Consider just the English-speaking world.