Putting the World into the World Wide Web
With the ever-complicated websites and web applications we are building, the need for internationalization and localization is becoming more important for businesses. This is particularly true for those who work in some form of global sales and services, and desire ways to address local language and social norms as well as to reach a global audience.
In other words: Pay attention to making your websites accessible in every country. It’s good for business.
The global website: advantages
There are several advantages to making your websites and apps more global. The reasons include everything from expanding a purchasing base, providing customer service in ways all customers can find assistance, and perhaps most important—provide an overall better experience for users who come from other cultures and speak different languages.
Among the advantages of global sites and applications advantages are:
- Expansion of customer base and more purchase “power.” According to Forrester Research, people are at least three times more likely to buy a product when they are addressed in their own language.
- Increased revenue for goods and services. Bowne Global Solutions published a white paper about a large U.S. IT company that, after several years online, discovered a significant percentage of inquiries into their services were coming from South Korea. Guess what? That’s right – they created a Web site in Korean and revenues rose by 8%.
- More efficient customer service. For many people, going online to get customer service or investigate support options has become a regular activity. Forrester’s research revealed that customer service costs drop for both companies and customers when instructions are displayed in the customer’s native language.
- Better user experience. For most websites, it’s the prime directive: Create an experience that feels comfortable. Happier user s find lasting value in the offerings available and become more loyal.
Of course, not every website and application fits into a going-global approach. Still, the principles hold, especially when we examine the ways technologists approach these issues.
Defining Internationalization
At the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) work has been going on for nearly two decades in helping to define the needs and means to express sites and applications in a variety of languages and cultural needs. This is primary done in the Internationalization Working Group, which also works with style and other W3C initiatives to establish cultural and technical specifications and guidelines for software implementers as well as developers.
In the W3C, internationalization is defined as: “the design and development of a product, application or document content that enables easy localization for target audiences that vary in culture, region, or language."
Not only does Internationalization (sometimes written in geek shorthand as i18n) encourage design and development that removes barriers to local and international access to sites and applications, but it provides the means for developers to do so by providing:
- Technology for features that facilitate international access including:
- Bi-directional text (bidi) text
- Language identification
- Vertical text
- Non-Latin Typography
- Technology for features relating to local, regional, language or culturally related concerns:
- date and time formats
- calendar localization
- number formats and numeral systems
- personal names and forms of address
Along with work being done in standards creation for CSS and HTML5, internationalization also encourages developers and site designers to separate local content from primary content so that localized alternatives can be loaded or selected based on user need and preference.
Defining Localization
As with internationalization, localization specifications and guidelines are provided by the W3C, which defines localization as “The adaptation of a product, application, or document content to meet the language, cultural, and other requirements of a specific target market.”
Often thought of only as a synonym for translation of the user interface and documentation, localization is a substantially more complex issue. Some of the features of Localization (shorthanded as l10n) include:
- Site customization related to:
- Numeric, date, and time formats
- Currency use
- Keyboard usage
- Symbols, icons, and color
- Sensitivity to cultural perceptions in regards to language and visual images
Essentially, this creates a parent/child relationship, in which internationalization sets up the opportunity for localization to occur.
Cross cultural challenges
Our knowledge of culture is typically limited to what we as individuals are exposed to in our own lives. Unless we’ve studies anthropology, sociology, ethnography, global semiotics and multiple languages, most of us need guidelines to assist us in understanding when and how to internationalize or localize our sites and apps.
Culture of itself is a system of shared beliefs, values, customs, behaviors, and artifacts that the members of a given society use to cope with the world and with one another. These shared beliefs are often transmitted from generation to generation. You likely have your own experience related to family customs or via intercultural marriages. It’s not difficult to understand how we sometimes get our wires crossed when trying to express a different cultural perspective. All you have to do is examine the state of geopolitics!
Because of these inherent cross-cultural issues, it becomes imperative for developers and designers to have a relationship with qualified representatives of a given culture who can work with your team to adequately represent the cultural values of your target markets.
Localization topics of interest
Well-educated designers and developers, and those individuals working specifically for companies that do a lot of localization often come to understand cultural nuances. But so many of us simply aren’t exposed to these ideas. Yet, we begin to see the necessity to be aware of both the technical aspects of internationalization and the socio-cultural ones within localization.
Language
To localize language means to use the language of the target audience. Ways to do this include:
- Using the written and spoken language or languages for the target audience – but not necessarily the region or locale. Remember, we live in a multicultural world these days, and your target audience may not be specific to a culture’s origin.
- Using the audience’s time and date formats appropriately and consistently. A case in point: When users from the U.S. navigate European sites, date ordering usually is different from the month/day/year format to which U.S. folks are familiar. Instead, the format is day/month/year, which can be extremely confusing! Localization can help fix this by providing a U.S. English alternative for those users or by writing out the month in a drop-down field.
- Jargon and slang can be very confusing within a given language, much less between languages. As such, use such terminology with great care to ensure clear communication.
Be sure to have your team check out the links to the specs and guidelines to learn how these issues can best be managed.
Text fragmentation: Funny, but not
This is the comic relief section of the article. Text fragmentation is how text is split up and re-used, usually in the process of translation. All of these are actual samples of how fragmentation can occur, ironically all from hotels which themselves do their best to localize.. Surely you’ve seen some of these quotes, or have found a few of your own along the way!
“If you want the condition of cool in your room, please control yourself.” – Tokyo hotel
“Guests are expected to complain at the office between the hours of 09:00 and 10:00 each day.” – Paris hotel
“In case of fire, do your utmost to alarm the porter.” – Vienna hotel
And my favorite, because I found it myself:
“If you want to use a charge card in the business office, please see the front desk on floor 1. We are sorry for the incontinence.” – Los Angeles hotel
As much wit as text fragmentation can provide us, it’s clear to see why it’s very confusing. Another great example of text fragmentation comes from product manuals, where instructions are written in multiple languages and none of them make much sense!
Oh, and don’t be shy – have a good text fragmentation example to share? Click that “comment” button and let us know.
Screen concerns
These days screen concerns have become foremost in many specific areas of site and application development. Web developers create software for a variety of screen sizes from small mobile handsets to standard desktop screen sizes on up to the enormous screens you see used at sporting and music events. Remember, different languages require different implementation, style, and other technical approaches to ensure their on-screen behavior works.
Some of the issues involved in managing language on-screen include:
- Language direction. In Figure 1 you see how different languages require a complete shift in the way design is influenced. On the left, the bullets appear to the left of the text. On the right, they appear to the right. Some languages, such as Japanese, can also be both horizontal and vertical.
- Language expansion. Certain languages, when translated, expand significantly than their other-language counterparts.
- Language collapse. As with expansion, some languages take up less space than other language counterparts (Figure 2).
- Emphasis notation. Some languages – again, Japanese being a great example – require additional notation. This notation has to be technically provided for via specifications and software implementation.
- Special case displays of ideographs and glyphs. Languages can differ greatly in size ratio and specific glyphs.
Of course language only plays a part in the experience of localization. The use of color and symbols is of extreme importance as well.
Colors and Imagery
Different cultures respond differently to color and imagery. This response can be one of awareness. If I put the image of an American football helmet on a U.K. Football team page, lookout! But typically, our response to color and symbols are far subtler than that.
Here are some helpful guidelines for managing imagery:
- Use images that are relevant to the locale or topic.
- Think carefully about the colors within the image.
- Think about text in relation to the image.
- Ideally, overlay text rather than embed it. (This is a best practice for all development, not just i18n and l10n.)
And some tips for working with color:
- · Be aware of national and cultural issues as they relate to color.
- · A culturally problematic color can send the wrong message.
- When in doubt, use blue.
Why blue you might ask? Blue is considered the most globally “pure” color, with few or no cultural nuances attached to it, unlike other colors that can have tremendous influence over cultural perception.
The width of the world
Clearly, the art and science of creating sites for global audiences requires a lot more preparation and planning than one might think. Product managers, developers, and designers not working to address these issues specifically due to time or awareness will do well to at least understand the basic process of making sites more culturally savvy, and be better prepared for any future expansion.
We are on a dramatic learning curve for designing and developing websites as it is. However, the need to localize sites is going to become more and more a part of our day to day work. Understanding aspects of what makes a site internationalized and localized helps you and your team expand skill sets as well as improve reach, services and user experience. But the issue is one of helping other people, too. The internationalization process expands our understanding of the world and the people within it, how they relate to and use the Web, and how we can help make their experience the best one possible.
Helpful resources
- Read the excellent resources at the W3C i18n website.
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