Creating a Plan for

Internationalization and

Localization

Tuesday, October 10, 2011

Adam Asnes

CEO, Lingoport

adam@lingoport.com

@adamasnes

Kent Grave

Localization Manager

Cisco Systems

Lingoport

• Internationalization Services – Assessment

– Project planning

– I18n development

– I18n testing

– Localization integration

• Globalyzer – Internationalization software

• Find and fix i18n issues in code

• Support developer teams

Globalization

• Globalization (g11n) has two components :

– Internationalization (i18n) : software engineering to

enable localization – Global Scalability

– Localization (L10n): culture specific resources

(translation, etc.) – Market Specificity

Nobody Globalizes Just Cause It’s Cool

• We love revisiting code we’ve already developed

and paying tons of money to translators!

• Distracting from “Real Work”

Developers: Is It Internationalized?

• Most don’t know the answer

• Developers often underestimate i18n

requirements

– Just string externalization, right?

• Agile or other feature and release requirements

often overrun less formally measured i18n

requirements

• There is a Management Value in being able to

confirm global readiness

Organization Issues

• Lots to lose in time, revenue, costs, user

experience and product acceptance when code

isn’t well internationalized

• Few systematic tools and support for global-

ready software development & Localization

• Development moves fast, teams can be diverse

– Got Agile?

• Poor understanding of requirements

Internationalization is Expensive!

• After development

– $100’s of thousands

and more for serious

applications

– Must revisit existing

code

– Months to years delay

• During development

– Incidental, but still real

costs

– Processes

– Forethought

– Requirements

– Measurement

Sobering Experience

• 1 million line app?

– $500K+ dev 18n costs PLUS localization

– 6 months? Much more? Big delays?

• When presented with i18n costs, timeframes,

risk

– Many projects die

– Many postponed

– Some companies fade away

GETTING ORGANIZED

Creating an actionable plan

Assessment and Plan Building

• What’s in code

– Strings

– Locale-unsafe

functions/methods

– Programming Patterns

– Static References

• What’s not in code

– Requirements

– Locale Handling

– Data operations

– Database schema

Traditional Approach - repeat, and repeat, and repeat, and repeat

Localize and see what you’re missing

Ad-hoc scripts, overwhelm developers

View pages. Pore over code for strings, methods, etc.

Externalize and refactor one by one

Test, Pseudo-Localize

Maintenance of the i18n ProcessMaintenance of the i18n Process

STRING IDENTIFICATION

Pseudo-LocalizationGoing through each screen

Identify which string is pseudo-localized

Report back to engineering

Go through QA reportSift through code to find non-

externalized stringsReport back to QA

GLOBALYZER SCANS AND REPORTING

Scan, report & distribute

QA Engineering

LOCALE SENSITIVE METHOD IDENTIFICATION

Go through each screen, file, report, checking for: Character operation Collation Conversion Date/Time File & Path Locale and Character set Number Format Process control functions String operations

Go through QA reportSift through code to find Origin

of issueReport back to QA,

management

QA Engineering

GENERAL PATTERNS

Go through each screen, file, report, checking for: Font Characters Database patterns

Go through QA reportSift through code to find Origin

of issueReport back to QA,

management

QA Engineering

STATIC FILE REFERENCES

Go through each screen, file, report, checking for: video images contracts html configuration files

Go through QA reportSift through code to find Origin

of issueReport back to QA,

management

QA Engineering

Automated

2 weeks

Globalyzer Server and Clients

Server

Client Command Line

Create a Plan

• Tasks

• Schedule

• Staffing

• Costs

• Requirements doc, assessment or best practices

are not a plan

ONGOING

GLOBALIZATION

Teams Are Small and Distributed

Source: Antelink software development survey,

antelink.com

Organizational Perceptions of G11n

Developers:

•Straightforward, simple,

handled

•Tier 3 bugs, at best

•Features come first

•Not enough time

L10n Managers:

•Issues come up with

every release

•Tier 1,2 &3 bugs

•Not enough support

from dev.

•No way to verify until

localization

•Lack deep knowledge

of code

Business Managers:

•Sales/biz expectations

•Time to market

•Over budget and late

Ongoing i18n

• Make measuring i18n part of an ongoing

process, like a nightly build

• Regular requirement for development – part of

every cycle, agile or otherwise

• Build an i18n testing strategy that leverages

Localization testing as well.

– Pseudo-locales

Catch Bugs Early!

Source: “Software Internationalization Tools and Solutions” - Xerox

Ma

inte

nance

Loca

liza

tio

n

Testing

Codin

g

Arc

hitectu

re a

nd D

esig

n

Requirem

ents

30 x

15 x

7 x

4 x

2 x

Development Phase when an I18N bug is detected

Accepta

nce

Ongoing Globalization

• Focus on leveraging expertise

– Tools help you scale

– Staff experts

– Training

– Keep repeating the globalization value message

– Get help repeating the message

– Fight Entropy!

Questions & Answers

Adam Asnes

adam@lingoport.com

Twitter: @adamasnes

Kent Grave

Cisco Systems

Resources

http://www.lingoport.com

Globalyzer

http://www.globalyzer.com

Blog

http://i18nblog.com

•Contact us for a detailed individual presentation, or i18n needs discussion

•Try Globalyzer at http://globalyzer.com