Localization
Staff at intelligent True Services have been localizing software and user documents since 1993. From DOS-based applications and PageMaker and MS Word documents, to today’s mobile Apps, Workbench applications, and DITA-source documents, we are ready to serve your needs.
We at intelligent True Services work with Alchemy Catalyst and SDL Passolo software localization tools, and SDL Trados
What is localization and what makes it different from translation?
According to Wikipedia, translation is “communication of the meaning of a source-language text by means of an equivalent target-language text.” And, that localization is “the process of adapting a product’s translation to a specific country or region.”
In essence, the main difference with translation is that localization adapts language to meet the needs of your market.
What is globalization?
While localization focuses on the output from the translation process, globalization adapts the source content itself – whether it be an application or user document – so it can be used for multiple countries. While localization occurs during translation, globalization occurs before the translation process.
A good example of localization versus globalization is how we handle the application user interface. European languages such as Spanish and Italian require more real estate in the application interface than English. As such, resizing must occur to make user interface objects larger in localized languages.
You can increase the area for user interface objects in two ways:
- Increase the area for U/I objects in the target localized language.
- Increase the area for U/I objects in the source English.
Increase area for user interface in target localized language
By handling resizing of the user interface in the target localized language, localization does not affect development. Conversely, a disadvantage is that much of the same resizing and repositioning of objects may have to be done in multiple target languages.
Increase area for user interface in source (English)
If you choose to increase the size of the user interface in the source language (English for example), resizing and repositioning must be done by the development team. During application development, developers should always be thinking about localization and adding extra room for target languages. Even if the development team does add extra room to accommodate the various target languages, there may be cases where there is still not enough room and resizing and repositioning is still required during localization.
Another problem with adding so much space in the source application is that the space may not be required for East Asian languages. Chinese and Japanese user interfaces often require less space. If the application source language is set up with a lot of space, target East Asian languages may have too much white space, requiring a need to localize the application user interface to decrease the amount of real estate used.