Globalization, Localization etc
Taken from several sources
Globalization Outline
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Bad Examples
Why Important
Issues
Principles
How to Do It – Tools, Lifecycle
WWW
Resources
Bad Examples – Excuse My French
• Look at the menus
• Look at the dialog
box
• Incomplete
translation !
Bad Examples – We Are the World?
• What do you mean that you don’t have a state?
• What do you mean that you don’t have a zip
code?
– Some other countries use “postal code”
• This is US-centric – especially if fields are
required!
Bad Examples – The Sun Never
Sets on the British Empire?
• The user swears that this is
really how you spell
customize
• Even within a given
language – such as English
– there are variations
• British/Australians spell a
lot of words differently
than we do
• More US-centricism
• Good Example – Microsoft
recognizes Catalan
Bad Examples – If the Shoe Fits?
• That button fit the word
“Preview”, but not “Vista
Preliminar”
• Some languages tend to take
more letters than others in
general
• Some languages might not
have exactly the right word
and need a phrase
• Oh, BTW – is “Scan” a
Spanish word?
Why Worry About It?
• Profits
– Population
• US –
300,000,000
• World – 6,000,000,000
– Growing World-Wide Market
– Competition
– But make sure business case exists
• Public Relations
• Legal Requirements
Levels of Globalization Concerns
• Comprehensibility
• Usability
• Desirability
• These move from easier to harder
Globalization Issues
• special characters – e.g. ä, ñ, ø
• Left-to-right versus right-to-left
• Date and time formats
• Numeric and currency formats
• Weights and measures
• Telephone numbers and addresses
• Names and titles (Mr., Ms., Mme.)
• ID numbers
• Capitalization and punctuation
• Sorting sequences
• Icons, buttons, colors
• Pluralization, grammar, spelling
• Culture, Etiquette, policies, tone, formality, metaphors
Principles
Culture includes …
• Surface – visible – including simple things like
currency, date and time formats, and more
complex – dress, family relationships
• Unspoken rules
• Unconscious rules
Format
• Give users chance to express preferences for
format for
– dates,
– time,
– currency,
– Numbers
– Address
– Phone numbers
Color
• E.g. sacred colors vary
• Meanings of Colors differ – see Table 10.2
on p 577
• Look out for color combinations
associated with political movements
Metaphor
• GUI / Direct Manipulation approach is based
on analogy to real world objects
• Danger for globalization – if the objects are
not the same world-wide
• E.g. mailbox icon, telephone
• E.g. typewriter metaphor in word processing
– but Japanese and Chinese rarely used
• E.g. file folders don’t look the same in China,
in India, think more in terms of bookshelf,
books, chapters …
Symbols
• Avoid use of pictures of sports equipment, national
monuments, symbols that would be unfamiliar to
members of other cultures
• Symbols meaning may be culturally dependent
• Be cautious with use of animals, religious symbols,
national flags, colors, hand gestures, stereotypical people
• Watch out for cultural expectations regarding gender,
racial stereotypes etc
• Avoid use of culture specific holiday symbols
• Use ToolTips to explain any icons that could be
ambiguous
• Check more universal than X
• Emoticons (such as  ) vary – e.g. Japanese (^_^)
Symbols
• Consider using universal signs
• Some (not all computer relevant) -
Sound
• Be careful with sounds – consider possible
meaning
Legal Environments
• Laws differ from country to country
• E.g. in some countries it is illegal to
directly position your product against the
competition
Unspoken Rules
• E.g. Japanese find disembodied body
parts unappealing (Marcus et al 1999)
Humor
• Is very culturally dependent
• May be dependent on language
• Doesn’t tend to work well cross culturally
Language
• Language can greatly affect the length of text. Save room
• Modify keyboard mnemonics to fit target languages
• It is difficult to handle translation if the program concatenates
strings on-the-fly as the program is running
• Use simple syntax – noun-verb-object
• Use consistent terminology – makes for easier translation
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Try to stay away from words with multiple meanings
Visual puns may not translate
Avoid difficult noun phrases (e.g. 3 nouns in a row)
Avoid abbreviations and acronyms
Avoid slang
Avoid use of letters in bitmaps and toolbar icons
Language
• Avoid overly friendly style, which may be interpreted as
condescending
• Watch out for gender, racial, national stereotypes etc
• If no translation exists in a language, use the original word
• Layout should follow left-to-right vs. right-to-left vs. vertical
pattern of reading
– Microsoft Windows 2000/XP localization of Hebrew and Arabic handle
right to left – but ensure that your application is “mirroring aware so that
text is not “flipped”
• Sorting sequences – where special characters, such as ñ, ä, å, ë,
and even the Spanish ll, fit in alphabetical order
• Remember that help files must be translated
• Microsoft translates first to German, then Arabic, then Japanese
Examples
• avoid culturally specific examples
Functional Requirements
• May vary from location to location (e.g.
need for user control and initiative may
vary in different cultures)
Details, Details
• When planning printed reports, consider
European paper size (A4)
• Are specified fonts available for wide
range of languages?
Globalization in the Lifecycle
• Starts user analysis – identifying user communities and their
characteristics
• Followed with identifying the requirements – what varies – and of
those, what is important/ worthwhile
• Include people internationally in feedback process
– requirements determination
– Usability inspection
– usability testing
– Beta testing
• Ensure developers are familiar with globalization issues
• Ensure test team can recognize globalization problems
• Planning should specifically identify globalization impacts – to
avoid surprises and cost-overruns later
• Some effort produces more globalized result than no effort
What about the WWW?
• Log files can show geographical distribution of current
visitors
• Usability testing can be done without leaving home
• Can start site with language choice. E.g.
http://www.yahoo.com/
• Language-specific start pages should have their own
URLs
• Also provide means to specify language on other pages
• When showing times – give 1) where; 2) relationship to
GMT; and 3) other known cities
• Consider bandwidth
• If e-commerce offerings differ from country to country –
make sure user gets appropriate choices
Tools
• Microsoft Locales – in Windows,
– “a locale is a set of user preference information related to
the user’s language, environment, and cultural
conventions. This information is represented as a list of
values used to determine the correct input language,
keyboard layout, sorting order, and the formats used for
numbers, dates, currencies, and time”
– Windows 2000 and XP support 126 and 136 locales
– Can specify user locale, input locale, and system locale
– Windows User Interface can be displayed in different
languages – 90% localized
Tools
• VB, Visual C++, Java all provide some
support
• Unicode necessary to store larger
character sets
Localizing
• Ensure user interface text is isolated from
code – put in files
• Store multiple versions of same string if
used more than one place
• Avoid text in bitmaps and icons
• Do not generate text strings on-the-fly
• Test localized applications on all language
variants
Resources - Corporate
• Microsoft
– http://www.microsoft.com/globaldev/
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Resources – Corporate Consultants
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• www.amanda.com/resources/HFWEB99/HFWEB99.Marcus.html
• www.useit.com - Jakob Nielsen’s site – several pages relevant
Resources - Academic
• www.acm.org/sigchi/bulletin/1996.3/international.html
• http://eies.njit.edu/~turoff/coursenotes/CIS732/samplepro/use
r_interface_internationalizat.htm
Resources - Organizations
• http://www.w3.org/International
• http://Dmoz.org/Computers/Software/Globalization/
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End Globalization