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2019 Blogs, Blog

When a digital product is developed in and for a particular geography and market, the enterprise and developer/architect function is focused on getting it to market first. Once it matures and receives greater engagement, enterprise is then looking to continuously add and develop a stable product that is feature-rich, scalable and robust. So, when the opportunity to take the product global arises, the design and development of the product encounters a whole set of challenges that is not accounted for in the initial stages of development. This is when the localization-versus-internationalization challenges take root.


We have compiled a few quick hacks that you can use as your checklist for a smoother transition.


Let’s first define internationalization and localization. As per the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), localization is defined as “the adaptation of a product, application or document content to meet the language, cultural and other requirements of a specific target market (a “locale”).” 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.”


So, what are the typical factors that teams of designers, architects and developers need to first establish, foreseeing internationalization?



Legal and Regulatory Guidelines

Different regions, geographies, countries and markets have different regulatory guidelines that can extend to several facets including organization practices, trademark requirements, currency repatriation, tax compliance, regulatory compliance, duties and corporate agreements and contracts, currency repatriation and so on. If you’re working on a product that you need to go-to-market in China for instance, then it is important to understand the legal and regulatory framework within which you can operate.


Hosting Location, Global Distribution/Content Delivery Network Infrastructure

Different geographies, different networks and different internet speeds are factors one must consider when taking your product global. How can a product be designed to ensure that it “loads” quickly for customers across regions? Should there be a central database or should it be distributed? Who, where and how will distribution of data be managed? These are critical questions to ensure there are no customer drop-offs.


Unicode Support

Today, Unicode allows support in most of the world’s writing systems. Enabling its proper usage that can support local, regional or even cultural context is critical. For instance, supporting special characters from different languages that are outside the ASCII boundaries (defines 128 characters in a typical English keyboard) is extremely important. Unicode defines 221 characters (characters from all recognized languages in the world), thus, UTF-8/16 encoding format should be supported when you’re planning to release your product in different geos. This is a crucial requirement for database, DB connection, build setup and server startup options—just to name a few.


If you’re fond of hard coding text, think again. Creating text and media that is easily editable, gives you the flexibility to easily localize and adapt your product for different regions.


Multi-Lingual Support

English may be one of the most spoken languages in the world, but that doesn’t necessarily mean every region or market thinks, reads and speaks English. For instance, if you’re releasing a product in Japan, China or even India (with its plethora of scripts for different languages), multi-lingual support for your product is essential. Here are a few things to follow:


  • Maintain language-specific resource files for each support language (eg. en-us.properties, ar-sa.properties) with key value pairs—the key is used in the code to place the text, and value is the language specific translated text.
  • All text on the screen, messages and label text must be sourced from resource files, and there should be no referencing of text directly in the code.
  • Choose to keep the resource files at the back end/front end. Front end is recommended as it helps improve performance, and by avoiding calls to the back end and toggling, it moves fast.
  • UI framework should support translation features.

Think about text expansion in different languages, in terms of number of characters and how it can affect the UI and UX of your product. The same holds good for languages that are written from left to right, as well as translations.


Scalable Framework for Geo-Specific Customization

Development framework must consider the UI/UX, branding, orientation and size of the product when going i18n. For instance, the color red could mean different things in different countries and cultures—in China it could mean endurance, in India it could mean purity, in Europe it could mean self-sacrifice or in South Africa it could mean grief and sorrow. Therefore, it is extremely crucial to understand different nuances of cultural significance while designing the UI for a great UX. A few other factors to keep in mind:


  • Tag-based framework for content picks up where the content is tagged to language/country, and gets picked for users having matching profiles, for the tag values. This way, you may have content for various languages, but a user in Spain gets to see only the Spanish content just by setting his language preference in your system.
  • Orientation and sizing adjustments—specific CSS to handle alignment/size specific customization.
  • Navigation (left to right), enable/disable certain options through CSS customization.
  • Localization-based content.
  • Language-based content.

Developing a framework for rapid transition to international markets requires a thorough think-through from a product enablement perspective, keeping in mind operational efficiency without impacting product behavior. Using this checklist will help you save time, money and rework when you finally decide to go i18n.


About the Author: 


Ruchi is the Director- Solution Architect with Relevance Lab. She has around 20 years of experience in leading execution of projects for various customers in technical leadership roles. She has been involved in designing, implementing and managing enterprise grade, highly scalable i18n solutions catering to multiple geographies with diverse needs.


(This blog was originally published in DevOps.com and can be read here 


https://devops.com/is-your-digital-product-ready-for-international-prime-time/ )


Source: Devops.com

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