Globalization, Localization etc

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Globalization, Localization etc

• Taken from several sources

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Globalization Outline

• Bad Examples
• Why Important
• Issues
• Principles
• How to Do It Tools, Lifecycle
• WWW
• Resources

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Bad Examples Excuse My French

• Look at the menus
• Look at the dialog box
• Incomplete translation !

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Bad Examples We Are the World?

• What do you mean that you dont have a state?
• What do you mean that you dont have a zip code?
• Some other countries use postal code
• This is US-centric especially if fields are
  required!

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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

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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?

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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

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Levels of Globalization Concerns

• Comprehensibility
• Usability
• Desirability
• These move from easier to harder

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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

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Principles
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Culture includes

• Surface visible including simple things like
  currency, date and time formats, and more complex
  dress, family relationships
• Unspoken rules
• Unconscious rules

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Format

• Give users chance to express preferences for
  format for
• dates,
• time,
• currency,
• Numbers
• Address
• Phone numbers

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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

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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 dont look the same in China,
  in India, think more in terms of bookshelf,
  books, chapters

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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 (_)

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Symbols

• Consider using universal signs
• Some (not all computer relevant) -

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Sound

• Be careful with sounds consider possible meaning

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Legal Environments

• Laws differ from country to country
• E.g. in some countries it is illegal to directly
  position your product against the competition

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Unspoken Rules

• E.g. Japanese find disembodied body parts
  unappealing (Marcus et al 1999)

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Humor

• Is very culturally dependent
• May be dependent on language
• Doesnt tend to work well cross culturally

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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
• 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

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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

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Examples

• avoid culturally specific examples

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Functional Requirements

• May vary from location to location (e.g. need for
  user control and initiative may vary in different
  cultures)

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Details, Details

• When planning printed reports, consider European
  paper size (A4)
• Are specified fonts available for wide range of
  languages?

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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

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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

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WWW Language Strategies

• Store users language preference in a client-side
  cookie
• Encoding the Language code in the URL
• Storing user language preference in user profile
• Using pre-generated pages

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Tools

• Microsoft Locales in Windows,
• a locale is a set of user preference information
  related to the users 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

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Tools

• VB, Visual C, Java all provide some support
• Unicode necessary to store larger character sets

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Machine Translation
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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

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Resources - Corporate

• Microsoft
• http//www.microsoft.com/globaldev/

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Resources Corporate Consultants

• www.amanda.com/resources/HFWEB99/HFWEB99.Marcus.ht
  ml
• www.useit.com - Jakob Nielsens site several
  pages relevant

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Resources - Academic

• www.acm.org/sigchi/bulletin/1996.3/international.h
  tml
• http//eies.njit.edu/turoff/coursenotes/CIS732/sa
  mplepro/user_interface_internationalizat.htm

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Resources - Organizations

• http//www.w3.org/International
• http//Dmoz.org/Computers/Software/Globalization/
  

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Resources - WWW

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End Globalization