Web Sites and FTP Sites

Forums and newsgroups: At the time of this writing, Microsoft is replacing its newsgroups with forums. At some point in the near future, the internationalization newsgroup (microsoft.public.dotnet.internationalization at msnews.microsoft.com) will be replaced with an equivalent forum at http://forums.microsoft.com/msdn. This newsgroup/forum is an excellent source of internationalization answers.

Dr. International. http://www.microsoft.com/globaldev/DrIntl/default.mspx. Various resources, FAQ, and "Ask Dr. International," which allows you to ask internationalization questions.

The Unicode Consortium. http://www.unicode.org. All the facts on Unicode.

The World Fact Book. http://www.odci.gov/cia/publications/fact-book/index.html. A great source of information about countries, regions, and languages.

Ethnologue. http://www.ethnologue.com. Comprehensive statistics and descriptions of languages by country and "a whole lot more." Available free online and also for purchase in book and CD-ROM versions.

Localization Glossary. ftp://ftp.microsoft.com/developr/msdn/newup/Glossary/. Translations in more than 40 languages of textual phrases used in various Microsoft products.

Postal Code Formats of the World. http://www.magma.ca/~djcl/postcd.txt. An analysis of postal code formats used in various countries.

Frank's Compulsive Guide to Postal Addresses. http://www.columbia.edu/kermit/postal.html. An analysis of address formats and postal codes used in various countries.

The Global Source-Book for Address Data Management. http://www.grcdi.nl/book2.htm. A commercial, comprehensive analysis of address formats and information from 242 countries.

Country Codes. http://www.statoids.com/wab.html. A listing of a wide variety of codes (ISO, ITU, IOC, etc.) used in 240 countries.

Microsoft Typography Fonts and Products. http://www.microsoft.com/typography/fonts/default.aspx. Information on what products supply what fonts, and also what fonts are supplied by what products. You can use this to determine whether a user is likely to have a font you need.

Ranking of Top 20 Translation Companies. http://www.common-senseadvisory.com/members/res_cgi.php/050701_QT_top_20.php. A list of the top 20 largest suppliers of translation services.

The Savvy Client's Guide to Translation Agencies. http://www.bytelevel.com/reports/savvy/2005.html. An annually up-dated commercial review of translation agencies and how to choose one.

Greatranslations. http://www.greatranslations.com. A Web site for translators. You can find translators and links to many free localization resources here.

Foreign Word. http://www.foreignword.com. A wealth of free language tools and resources.

The Translation Guide. http://mason.gmu.edu/~aross2. A searchable collection of 520 links to online machine translators, dictionaries, and word lists.

100 Links to Online Translators and Machine Translation Software. http://www.bultra.com/mtlinks.htm.

The Calendar Zone. http://www.calendarzone.com. An extensive collection of links to numerous calendar types.

Shtick! http://www.shtick.org/Translation. A collection of machine translations that have resulted in less than perfect but fairly amusing results.

Lost in Translation. http://www.tashian.com/multibabel. Mindless "Chinese Whispers" translation fun.