9 Internationalization Best Practices for Effective Software Localization

Reaching customers worldwide is easier than ever, but your software needs to be ready for the global market. How is this connected to internationalization? Internationalization (i18n) is a crucial aspect of software development. By integrating i18n best practices into the development process from the outset, companies can save time and reduce costs associated with entering new markets. 

Even if your company is not currently expanding into new regions or planning to support additional languages, thinking ahead and implementing i18n is a smart move. When you are ready to expand globally, your product can be easily localized to meet the specific needs of different markets.

Understanding Internationalization (i18n)

Internationalization (or i18n) is a foundational framework that helps you to prepare your software for a global audience. It  involves designing software to be easily localized for  various languages, regions, and cultures, without requiring significant engineering changes. When implemented correctly, i18n simplifies localization (l10n) and translation, facilitating smoother market expansion. 

i18n Best Practices

Internationalization (i18n) is more than just Unicode support. It’s also important to understand how the programming language you are using handles locale, and to use development tools that continuously monitor code for i18n-related issues. Let’s explore the top i18n best practices that can help you make internationalization a success.

1. Start Early

Planning for internationalization and localization at the beginning of a project makes the process much easier than trying to incorporate them later. Coding with i18n in mind should always be part of development — from the initial concept through adding new features and fixing bugs. Developers need to be knowledgeable about i18n principles and methodologies.

A lack of knowledge and expertise can lead to failures in implementing effective i18n strategies. Providing training or consulting with i18n experts can bridge this gap. Our team can help implement i18n methodologies, as we have done for many of our clients like Snap.com.

“Our i18n issues were complicated, and we were stuck. We didn’t have the depth of i18n expertise necessary to solve them in a timely manner. Hiring Lingoport was the best decision for us.”

2. Always Support Unicode

In simple terms, Unicode is a type format that lets fonts support over 149,000 glyphs, such as letters, punctuation, and other symbols. Supporting Unicode helps make localization possible because the characters needed for translating text for different locales are available in a single font set. Chinese, Japanese and some other languages require double-byte fonts, so verify that Unicode fonts included in the project support double-byte.

Unicode eliminates the need for multiple character sets and encoding conversions, which can lead to errors and inconsistencies. This simplification makes the localization process more straightforward and less error-prone.

With a single encoding standard, developers can focus on other localization aspects, such as translation and cultural adaptation, without worrying about character representation issues.

3. Include i18n in Your Development Environment

Internationalization-related bugs can lead to localization issues, making it essential for developers to identify and address these bugs effectively. Implementing specific tools can help developers pinpoint potential or existing bugs. For example, Globalyzer allows developers to detect i18n bugs directly within their IDE, review pull requests, and scan code repositories for internationalization issues. Integrating Globalyzer into the development environment provides real-time feedback on every i18n issue or bug. 

• Identify the type
• Assign severity and prioritize accordingly
• Utilize AI to explain why it’s an i18n issue
• Review the code line within a context 
• Navigate directly from the dashboard to the exact line in the code repository

4. Externalize Strings

Hard coding text for menus, alerts, and other dialogue items makes them impractical for localization teams to manage. By externalizing strings, you separate the translatable content from the source code. This separation makes it easier for localization teams to access, manage, and translate the text. This approach reduces the risk of missing strings or translating code comments and ensures that all user-facing text is accounted for. Here are five simple steps to follow:

Store all translatable text in resource files, such as JSON, XML, or properties files, depending on the programming language and platform. These files should contain key-value pairs, where each key represents a specific string in the application.

Use a resource management system or library to load and manage these externalized strings at runtime. This system should be capable of selecting the appropriate language file based on the user’s locale settings. Many frameworks and libraries, such as gettext for C/C++ or the ResourceBundle class in Java, provide built-in support for managing externalized strings.

Establish consistent naming conventions for string keys to make them easily identifiable and manageable. This practice helps maintain clarity and organization, especially in large projects with numerous strings.

Automate String Extraction:Use tools to automate the extraction of strings from the codebase into resource files. This automation reduces manual effort and ensures that all strings are captured for translation.

Regularly update resource files to reflect changes in the application and review them to ensure all strings are current and correctly localized.

5. Don’t Concatenate

Writing code that builds phrases on the fly, or concatenation, may seem efficient, but it makes localization extremely difficult. Let’s see it with an example

This line produces “White dog” in English but can cause problems when translating to other languages:

• Different languages have unique grammatical structures, word orders, and syntactical rules for example, “Chien blanc” in French.
• Concatenated strings can lose contextual meaning when translated, leading to awkward or incorrect translations. 
• Many languages have complex rules for pluralization and gender agreement, which concatenation does not account for. This can lead to incorrect forms being used in translations.

As a result, your users may experience a poor user experience, your software may appear unprofessional, and some features might even become unusable.

6. Use ICU for Accurate Locale-Specific Formatting

Different cultures and regions have unique conventions for formatting dates, times, numbers, and currencies. For example, the date format “MM/DD/YYYY” is common in the United States, while “DD/MM/YYYY” is used in many European countries. Similarly, time formats can vary between 12-hour and 24-hour clocks.

International Components for Unicode (ICU) provides robust libraries that ensure your software displays information correctly according to the user’s locale, enhancing user experience and cultural relevance. By supporting ICU, you can easily adapt to various global standards and streamline the internationalization process, making your application more accessible and reliable across diverse markets.

7. Test with Pseudo-Localization

Pseudo-localization simulates language translation to help confirm the software is ready for localization and helps find potential L10n issues as developers are writing code. This process replaces characters with similar-looking ones or adds accents and special characters, such as converting “Account Settings” to “Àççôûñţ Šéţţîñĝš.”

By mimicking the translation process, pseudo-localization helps uncover issues that could arise during actual localization such as text expansion, encoding problems, hard-coded strings, and layout constraints.

💡Read more “Pseudo-Localization and Its Role in Localization Testing”

8. Create Multiple Quality Gates

Here is some special advice from Genevieve Bolduc, Localization Manager at Avigilon (a Motorola Solutions Company).

Create as many quality gates as you can not to let any i18n bug hurt your localization.

• Onboard Engineering Teams: Begin by ensuring each engineering team goes through a comprehensive onboarding process focused on the importance of localization and best practices for implementing it effectively. This initial quality gate ensures that engineers are aware of best practices from the start.
• Wireframe Review: Involve the localization team during the wireframe review phase. This early involvement allows for the identification of potential localization issues, such as layout challenges with different languages. This acts as a crucial quality gate before development progresses further.
• Pull Requests: During development, require that any new code or features containing strings go through a pull request process. The localization team should be included as required reviewers for repositories with strings. This ensures that no string-related issues pass through without localization review, serving as another quality gate.
• String Management: Utilize tools like Localyzer and its String Manager feature to monitor and manage strings throughout the development process. For instance, if a string is untranslated or recently changed, the team can quickly address it and send it for translation. This ongoing monitoring serves as a continuous quality gate, allowing real-time correction of string-related issues.

These quality gates work together to prevent localization errors and ensure that the product meets the necessary linguistic and cultural standards before release.

💡 More advices from Genevieve in this webinar recording “How to Effectively Manage Software Strings for Seamless Localization”.

9. Include Localization with Internationalization

Internationalization and localization aren’t isolated processes. By checking for i18n as part of regular development sprints and including localization testing (and even machine translation), internationalization and localization bugs can be caught before they become expensive problems. The cost to fix i18n-related bugs can be over 14 times higher after a product launch compared to addressing them while coding.

💡Read more “What’s the real cost of i18n?”

Internationalization is a Good Business

Incorporating i18n into your software development strategy is a smart business move. This will not only give your business the ability to efficiently localize software but also enhance user experience. Users and customers prefer interfaces in languages they understand, with correctly formatted numbers, dates, addresses, and local currencies. 

Companies developing their software with i18n support — even if they aren’t localizing yet — have an advantage over competitors who don’t. The cost to internationalize before releasing is significantly lower, and localization support is already in place, so adding support for additional locales is faster, too. 

That’s just part of the global reality of today’s customers. 

If you need help implementing i18n in your company, book a call with us.