Cultural Awareness, Localization and the Impact on Content Creation of User Information Destined for Overseas Markets with Brenda Inman and Diana Ballard

Brenda Inman
St. Jude Medical
Manager, Localization
Cultural Awareness, Localization, and
Impact on Content Creation of User
Information Destined for Overseas
Markets
How St. Jude Medical
has built localization into
content creation

Best Practices
•Facilitate localization
•Reduce cost and effort
•Reduce potential mistakes
•Increase clarity for end-users
•Optimize time to market for localized product
Examples
•Cultural and linguistic differences that may not
be immediately obvious

Best Practices
• Plan for localization, do not rush
• Write code in a localization-friendly way
• Perform "pseudo localization" to identify
hard coded strings
• Never hardcode date, time, numeral
separators, or currency formats
• More things to keep in mind

Plan for localization, do not rush
• Localization scheduling and scoping
– Translation & review
– Initial testing
– Regression testing
Be prepared for multiple
rounds of translation and
testing. Often translated
strings exceed character
limits and must introduce
abbreviations that aren’t
necessarily common in that
language.

Localization-friendly encoding
Use Unicode … why?
Unicode provides a unique number for every
character, no matter what platform, no matter what
program, no matter what language
•Unicode supports most of the world’s scripts
•UTF-8 encoding
•www.unicode.org - search “Internationalization
and the Case for Unicode”

Separate strings from code
• More efficient
– Developing a new international version of
the application only involves creating a
new language resource file because each
version has the same code
• Reduce cost & effort
– Manage one set of code rather than a
separate set of code for each language
• Reduce risk
– By placing all relevant string resources in one file, you ensure a
more efficient localization process and reduce the chance of
leaving some strings un-localized

Source code & string resource files

Pseudo localization
If English text shows
up in your pseudo
localized UI, it
means that the string
is
hard coded
Pseudo localization simulates
translation by replacing text with
test characters while preserving
non-translatable code and
simulating expansion and
contraction

Best Practices
• Plan for localization, do not rush
• Write code in a localization-friendly way
• Perform "pseudo localization" to identify
hard coded strings
• Never hard code date, time, numeral
separators, or currency formats
• More things to keep in mind

Date format
English (US) Wednesday, October 12, 2014
English (UK) Wednesday 12th October 2014
Spanish (Spain) miércoles, 12 de octubre de 2014
Japanese
German mittwoch, 12. Oktober 2014
Arabic ،‫الربعاء‬12،‫أكتوبر‬2014
English (US) 10/12/14
English (UK) 12/10/14
Spanish (Spain) 12/10/14
Japanese 2014/10/12
2014 年 10 月 12 日（水曜日）
• Date formats vary
from language to
language and if
they are hard-
coded they cannot
be localized.
• They will appear
wrong and
confusing to the
end-user

Time format
• 24-hour clock
• Colon, comma, or
period as separator
• GMT (Greenwich Mean
Time) + or –
• Some time zones use
30 or 45 minute offsets*
• Avoid time references
to USA time (3 pm PST)
* India, Sri Lanka,
Afghanistan, and Australia
30 minutes; Nepal and
areas of New Zealand 45
minutes

Numeral separators
Style Country
1,234,567.89
China, Ireland, Israel, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand,
Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, United Kingdom, United States
1234567,89
Albania, Belgium, Bosnia, Brazil, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Denmark,
Estonia, Finland, France, French Canada, Germany, Greece, Hungary,
Italy, Latin Europe, Lithuania, Netherlands (non-currency numbers),
Poland, Portugal, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden
1234567.89 Australia, English Canada, China
1.234.567,89
Brazil, Denmark, Germany, Greece, Indonesia, Italy, Netherlands
(currency), Portugal, Romania, Slovenia
12,34,567.89 India*
1'234'567.89 Switzerland
* The Indian numbering system is used throughout India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal,
and Sri Lanka. It is based on the Vedic numbering system in which numbers over 9,999
are written in two-digit groups (or a mix of two- and three-digit groups) rather than the
three-digit groups used in most other parts of the world.

Numeral shape & correspondence
Numbers may be shaped differently or not have a one-to-one
correspondence to other languages or locales
٠١٢٣٤٥٦٧٨٩Arabic
Japanese

Currency
In some languages the currency symbol is
displayed before the numbers and in other
languages is displayed after the numbers or even
in between the number and the decimal
• 2€50 - France
• $123.45 - Canadian English
• 123.45$ - Canadian French
• 1.000 TL or ₺1.000 - Turkish
Lira

Hard coded font names
• Do not hard code font names
– “Arial” font face name on an Arabic machine
is “Arial, 178”
• Do not assume that a font is installed
– The user might delete or uninstall fonts
• Do not assume a selected
font supports the desired
script
– Miriam (a Hebrew font) can’t
be used to represent the
Japanese hiragana script

Font sizes
• Do not hard code the
font size used
• Make this variable
customizable according
to the script to be
displayed

More things to keep in mind
• Leave plenty of space for text expansion in
other languages
• Avoid acronyms, concatenations, substitutions,
and reuse of single strings
• Do not use (s) for plural
• Beware of forced line breaks in text strings
• Use caution when using symbols and
punctuation

Text expansion
Avoid designing software so that the English
strings “just fit”
•Some languages expand by 30%, some contract
by 30%
•Strings <7 characters can expand 100-300%
Use a dynamic UI to avoid issues with expansion and
contraction

Avoid
• Acronyms
– DOB = Date of Birth, common acronym in the US but
not necessarily globally recognized
– Device S/N = “N. di serie del dispositivo” (Italian)

Avoid
1. The patient data folders
2. The patient data files
A. will be deleted one after the
other
1. Las carpetas de datos del
paciente
2. Los archivos de datos del
paciente
A. séran eliminadas una después de
la otra (if concatenated with 1),
OR séran eliminados uno
después del otro (if concatenated
with 2)
Use complete strings in resource files
The patient data folders
will be deleted one after the other
The patient data files
• Concatenations
Concatenated strings and strings that are
used in multiple contexts are likely to have
grammar and gender agreement issues

Avoid
• Reuse of single-word strings
Use complete strings in resource files

Avoid
• Substitutions
1. La stampante è accesa
2. Il dispositivo è acceso
%s has %d minutes remaining to complete %n tests
John has 5 minutes remaining to complete 10 tests
Use short descriptors rather than full sentences---
User: %s Minutes remaining: %d Tests remaining: %n
จอห์นมี 5 นาทีเพื่อให้การทดสอบ 10
The %s is on
1. Printer
2. Device

Do not use (s) for plural
• The red button turns the device(s) on
• Il pulsante rosso accende il dispositivo
• Il pulsante rosso accende i dispositivi
• The owner(s) must fill in the warranty form
• El propietario debe rellenar el formulario de garantía
• Los propietarios deberán rellenar el formulario de
garantía
• You have %s unread message(s)
• Hai 1 messaggio non letto
• Hai 5 messaggi non letti

Forced line breaks
• With text expansion and different sentence word
order rules the line breaks might need the breaks in
different locations
– Chinese, Japanese, Korean, andThai follow special rules for line breaks
and don’t necessarily indicate the distinction between words by using
spaces.TheThai language doesn’t even use punctuation.
Insert USB flash drive:n
from sensor package orn
with file from web siten
NOTE: Will take a fewn
seconds to detect USBn
flash drive.
Inserire la chiavetta USB:n
dalla confezione del sensore on
con il file dal sito webn
NOTA: Ci vorranno alcunin
secondi per rilevare la chiavetta USB.

Use caution
• Symbols
– Checkmark (), number sign/pound/hash (#):
In Sweden and other countries, the checkmark indicates
“wrong” (väärin) and “R” (rätt) indicates “correct”
In Japan, Korea, and Taiwan “ ” is used◯
• Punctuation
– Question mark (?)
In Greek “ ; ”
In Arabic “ ‫؟‬ ”
• Emphasis
– Bold can “muddy” complex Asian characters, usually replaced
with a larger size character or different font
– Italic almost never used with Asian scripts as it destroys the
aesthetics of the characters, usually replaced with a larger size
character or different font

Cultural Awareness, Localization and the Impact on Content Creation of User Information Destined for Overseas Markets with Brenda Inman and Diana Ballard

Summary
• Plan ahead for localization
• Use Unicode UTF-8 encoding
• Use a dynamic UI
• Separate text strings from code
• Be aware of cultural differences (date, time,
currency, numbers)
• Avoid substitutions, concatenations, single-string
reuse, forced line breaks
• Use caution with symbols and punctuation

Cultural Awareness, Localization and the Impact on Content Creation of User Information Destined for Overseas Markets with Brenda Inman and Diana Ballard

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Cultural Awareness, Localization and the Impact on Content Creation of User Information Destined for Overseas Markets with Brenda Inman and Diana Ballard