What Is Internationalization?

Internationalization is the process of designing an application so that it can be adapted to various languages and regions without software changes. Of course, the goal is to design your Java applications so that there is no need for software changes to support new locales or regions . Although the tools and API's exist, it's also important that you plan up front if you need to support internationalization features in your application. It's much harder to add it in after the software is built.

Note

Sometimes the term internationalization is abbreviated as i18n, because there are 18 letters between the first "i" and the last "n."

Typically, when a developer writes an application, not much attention is given to where geographically the program will be run. The typical scenario is that an application is built with the assumption that it will only be ran from a single country, but then usually after the program is built, a decision is made that it will need to support other regions or countries . Writing an application for a single location is commonly referred to as a myopic program. A myopic program is only suited to one locale.

A locale is a region (usually geographic, but not necessarily so) that shares customs , culture, and language. Usually, the standard program is localized for one specific locale and is virtually unusable outside that locale without major alteration to the software. This violates a fundamental principle of OOP design, because the program is no longer portable or reusable. The process of isolating the culture-dependent code (text, pictures, and so on) from the language-independent code (the actual functionality of the program) is called internationalization. After a program has been through this process, it can easily be adapted to various locales with a minimal amount of effort. The Java language has built-in support for internationalization, which makes writing portable code easier.