Understanding Localization and Globalization

People around the world use different languages and different conventions for writing the date, time, and currencies. If you want to target all those people as potential users of your application, you need to customize your application to different cultures. One approach to doing this is to create a separate version of the application for each culture. However, this approach is likely to be prohibitively expensive.

Not surprisingly, the .NET Framework encourages you to take a different approach for developing such applications: writing one set of source code and then customizing only culture-specific resources for different locations around the world.

The Localization Process

The technical term for the process of preparing an application for shipment in a new location-specific version is localization . Microsoft divides this process of preparing a world-ready application into three phases:

• Globalization ” In the globalization stage, you identify all the localizable resources in the application and separate them from the executable code so they can be modified easily. Ideally, you perform the globalization step during the design phase so the resources always remain separate from the code.

• Localizability ” In the localizability stage, you ensure that translating the application for a new location won't require design changes. If you've planned for localization from the beginning, localizability will typically be part of your quality assurance (QA) process.

• Localization ” In the localization phase, you customize the application for new locales. This consists primarily of translating resources that you identified during the globalization phase.

Although in theory the terms globalization, localizability , and localization are precise and distinct, in practice they tend to be used interchangeably. Indeed, even the objectives for the certification exam are not careful in the way they use these terms. In this chapter, I often use the terms globalization and localization to mean the same thing ”developing world-ready applications.

What Should Be Localized?

Obviously, you must modify text that shows on the user interface when you're localizing an application. This includes text on Web forms, text in error messages, and any other text shown to the user . But there are many other things you might need to localize in any given application. Here's a list of items that are commonly localized, depending on the target locale:

• Menu item text.

• Form layouts . Text in German, for example, averages nearly twice as long as the same text in English. You might need to move and resize controls to accommodate this.

• The display format for dates and times.

• The display format for currency.

• The display format for numbers. For example, some countries use commas as the thousands separator in long numbers .

• Data input fields. (What if you're asking for a ZIP Code in a country other than the United States?)

• Maps, road signs, photos, or other graphics with local content.

• Shortcut keys . Not every character you know appears on every keyboard.

• Calendars . Countries such as Korea and Saudi Arabia use completely different calendars from each other.

• Alphabetical order for the items in a list.

You'll need to use some judgment in deciding which of these things really need to be localized in an application. You might decide, for example, that a set of general-purpose data entry fields can serve your needs for collecting addresses, rather than try to research address formats worldwide.