What needs to be localized in the application

Question

When you think about which areas should be taken into account for a localized version of the application, several things appear at once:

• Text display
• date and time
• Units
• Numbers and decimal places
• Custom input formats
• LeftToRight Support
• Dialog and control sizes

Are there other things / areas to remember or keep in mind when creating a localized application? Are there any resources that provide a list of best practices, not only for localizing text, but for everything related to localization?

Answer 1

After Kudzu talk about l10N I left the room there were more questions than I had before, and none of my old questions answered. But it gave me something to think about and brought the message "depends on how far you can / want to go."

• Translate text bodies with the above things
• Test all your controls for length / alignment in LTR / RTL, TTB (TopToBottom) BTT and all its combinations.
• Search for special characters and encodings
• Keep track of combinations of different alignments (LTR, RTL, TTB, BTT) and how they affect punctuation and quotes.
• Align controls to align text (Hebrew Win has its own start menu on the right
• Consider the length of the string. They may overflow in other languages.
• Place labels on the right side of the icons (LTR, TTB, etc.)
• Translation Language Selection Controls
• No texts in images (cannot be translated)
• Translate ALL (headings, logos, some languages ​​use different brand names, product names, etc.)
• Does the region have 24:00 or 00:00 (changes the AM / PM that goes with it).
• Does the region use AM / PM or 24:00.
• Which calendar system uses
• What is the figure for which part of the date (day, month, year in all its combinations)
• Try to avoid "copying" equivalent files. In some regions, there are different rules for changing words according to numbers. (This is an extremely difficult topic, which I will talk about if I wish)
• Translate sentences, not words. The syntax rules are too complex to embed your business logic.
• Do not use flags for regions. Languages! = Countries
• Consider which languages ​​/ dialects you can support (for example, in India there is a gazillion of languages).
• Encoding
• Cultural rules (some Western images depicting a business woman may be close to offensive in some other cultures).
• Look at language generalizations (e.g. boot (UK)! = Boot (US))

These are the ones that were on my head. The list just went on and on ...

Answer 2

Do not forget the overhead of converting all documentation and help files.

Answer 3

a couple of tips from my J2ME application days:

• do not translate individual words, translate whole phrases, even if there are corresponding repetitions. Later you will have to translate into a language where the words must be changed differently in different contexts, and you can get an analogue of "color: greenish"

• Right2Lelf includes list numbering, alignment, and alternative scrollbars

• Arabic languages ​​write the same letter in different ways based on the surrounding letters. You can’t just print a string from the character buffer, you will need a special control to output those or support from your platform.

• Alphabetical sorting is HARD. None of the native Chinese could explain the rules to me, but they will always see the words sorted incorrectly. There seem to be several options for sorting in Chinese. I think other languages ​​may have the same problem.