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Key Considerations When Preparing for Web Localization
Web globalization suggest considerable opportunities - but this also can present significant difficulties, especially where Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) and other technical aspects of Web development are concerned.
When developing Web sites in languages other than English, text representation is the major hurdle. There are three main technical considerations for preparing these documents:
- Language. The document must be delivered in the correct language (English, French, etc.) and dialect (Continental Portuguese, Brazilian Portuguese, and so on).
- Character set. Many languages - particularly eastern ones such as Chinese, Arabic, or Russian - do not use the standard Western alphabet. Documents that use these languages must display text in the correct character set.
- Directionality. Not all written languages go from left to right and top to bottom. Some go from right to left, or from bottom to top - or both. This is a consideration for languages such as Hebrew and Arabic.
The following list provides an overview of some key issues to address upfront:
Interface Design
Formatting
- Copy expansion should be prefigured into the space allowed for columns, frames and tables.
- Avoid text-in-graphic if possible; it will often change in translation, thus requiring more space.
- When delivering graphics make sure they are in original editable format with layers and linked objects. Do not flatten into GIF files.
- Fonts are often not easily ported for linguistic or coding reasons.
Culture
- Few icons are universal. Icons to be localized should be generic.
- Visual symbols and metaphors may evoke different reactions even in closely related cultures.
Back-end architecture
HTML encoding [read "Advice for Encoding Multilingual Web Documents"]
- Using document headers can help insure proper display of multilingual HTML documents.
- Escape Sequences and Character Entities will reduce the unpredictability of header display in dynamically built pages.
Client and Server-side Scripting
- Scripts should be able to handle non-roman and bi-directional characters, as well as multiple encoding schemes.
- Clean separation of user-interface strings from the rest of the function code will facilitate translation.
- Validation routines should possess the flexibility to handle multiple input masks for different ZIP and other international code formats.
Database Design
- Multiple formats for dates, currencies and decimal and non-decimal notation has to be figured into the database design.
- Databases need to accommodate 20-200% text expansion resulting from translation.
- A sorting and collating hierarchy for the different alphabets must be established.
Multilingual Content Management
- Database driven multilingual content systems must be able to support foreign-language character sets. They must be able to integrate versions of the same Web site in different languages.
- The source-language pages in a multilingual site are updated frequently. Dynamic implementation by the change management engine of these updates to the foreign-language pages will save precious resources.
- Seamless integration of the content management with foreign-language editing and authoring tools will abbreviate the tasks of site localization and maintenance.
Copy
- Standardized, jargon-free prose is easier to understand and translate.
- Adherence to a consistent stylistic standard simplifies translations and updates.
- A glossary of key terms should be developed as a reference for consistent terminology usage.
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