Localization Methodology

1. Introduction

Our customers’ success is due to their technological leadership and their global vision. Once successful at home, they rapidly move to expand globally. However, getting a product to market in a different region, language, and culture is a complex process.  Since many companies or government agencies often lack the necessary knowledge of peculiarities and idiosyncrasies of local cultures and languages, the essential ingredient to their winning recipe is the involvement of the right localization partner.

Why pick us as your localization partner?

Through years of assisting major government and business clientele in this country and overseas, we have successfully developed the methods and technology to handle localization processes efficiently and straightforwardly. But technologies alone are not enough to ensure success.

We continue to rely on our top-notch localization professionals, such as project managers, bilingual and multilingual translators, localization/internationalization engineers, human-factors engineers and business managers, to ensure that our customers’ corporate guidelines are met.

In short, we offer you:

       Well-organized and cost-effective localization processes;

       Outstanding project management;

       In-depth understanding of the subject;

       Experience with installing, running, compiling and testing software;

       Geographical presence on the markets that you are localizing for, and experience in the platforms specific to those markets;

       Access to a wealth of native translators and localizers.

2. How We Do It

As the global and local partner of companies with internationalization and localization needs we provide localization services, human and machine translation, and document creation in almost any language. In addition to Internet and intranet translation, we offers linguistic tools and services that help global companies create and adapt products, technical information and corporate messages to international markets. Our advanced translation and linguistic technologies enable corporate customers competing in international markets to leverage multilingual solutions in a more cost-effective manner.

Localization is much broader than just a linguistic process. It also deals with culture, content, and technical issues

2.1     Analysis.

We start by creating a localization plan detailing all products and associated files that need translation and localization, with implementation and release schedules. Factors influencing the extent of localization effort include the nature and scope of your product, the size of the target market and the audience, the length of the product lifecycle and expected update frequencies, competitor behavior, market acceptance, and national and international legislation. With your goals in view, we put forward the most effective way to localize your product: for example, determining activities common to multiple languages and separating them from activities that can be used for only one language. Based on scale and scope of the work, we set up a production schedule.  Whether you are localizing for the first time or just revising an update, we always ensures that localization efforts are synchronized with customer product releases.

The process begins with a review of the original language product, an analysis of all the product elements to be localized, and proactive identification of potential issues, including artwork, text expansion, and multi-byte character support for Asian languages and others.  By internationalizing displayed information, we assists customers in minimizing localization costs.

When undertaking a localization project for a first-time customer, the “divide and conquer” technique may be used if the project is too large to come to grips with all at once, or if localization costs need to be contained. In this case, we begin with the products that are most essential for localization.

A good evaluation is the key to a successful project. Failure to detect and communicate problems at an early stage has an enormous snowball effect on the effort required to complete the project.

2.2     Project Management

Requires planning, analysis, setup and coordination of resources, deployment of tools and software, tracking, reporting, and most of all flexibility.  Excels in managing mono- and multilingual projects, as evidenced by long-term customer relationships some dating back 8 years.  Each customer has a dedicated local Project Manager, who directly manages a team of translators, engineers and testers focused on the target language project requirements.  Since one project manager is assigned to work with you, all of the work is managed and coordinated through a single point of contact. Your project manager is your connection, who keeps you up to date, resolves any problems and answers any questions.

For large, multilingual projects, there is also an International PM  who is responsible for the local PM.  Local PMs and Team Leads may interact on a large project as needed, to ensure consistency in the variable and non-variable elements of the product from country to country.  All project activities can be tracked and adjusted in real time, using a Project Management Tool.  The overall objective is to adhere to the project timeline and budget, with quality assured, in a manner that requires little or no customer intervention.

Our localization process involves several phases:

       Exploration and Assessment

       Translation and Re-Integration

       Quality Assurance

2.3     Exploration and Assessment.

In the first phase, we prepare a Resource Localization Matrix (RLM), outlining the program functions and available resources.  This is incorporated into the Project Plan, which includes schedules and resource allocations.

The assessment process takes into account a number of factors, including the number of words to be translated; the amount of graphics involved; the desired localization level; and the application’s readiness for internationalization.  Internationalization readiness is essentially a question of modularity:  how much effort is required to separate linguistic content from program functionality, while still maintaining a consistent product look and feel.

Assessment questions include the following:

       Are text or graphics embedded within the code?

       Is the position and size of elements presented on the screen hard-coded?

       Is the memory required for strings dynamically allocated?

       What cultural conventions and sort order are used (for dates, numbers, etc.)?

Based on this analysis, we prepare customized localization kits that include all files, glossaries, style guidelines, translation information, and detailed instructions. These kits are given to translators so that they get an understanding of the project and its goals, as well as their individual responsibilities.

The Exploration And Assessment process is schematized in the following diagram

2.4     Translation and Re-Integration.

The translation of a product’s user interface and documentation is the core of our production process. But we don't simply translate text we generate new text that maintains the target, content, and nuance of the original work. We make every effort to make the subject matter unambiguous and clear, ensuring that the reader is not distracted by unusual word constructs or vague meanings.

In many cases, the information content and functionality of a product needs to be adapted for local audiences. Each country has different requirements and standards.  Creating or adapting software and web-based applications, effectively addresses many locale nuances, such as format of dates, time, numbers, currencies, and multi-keyboard support. All icons and bitmaps use international conventions followed worldwide. Dialog boxes are sized and formatted to allow for strings of needed length.

In this phase we use proprietary Machine Translation software, including its translation engine (TranSphere™) and translation memory, which puts previously translated phrases and sentences at the translators’ fingertips.

The Translation Phase is diagrammed below

We re-engineer and redesign product graphics and functionality (such as icons and dialog boxes) to ensure sensitivity to specific cultures.  Also, where relevant, we reengineer any underlying linguistic functionality, such as wizards and search engines.  Finally, we localize online help and manuals, documents, and other printed materials. We offer full desktop publishing solutions, including graphic design, layout, film output, pre-press, and printer vendor interaction.

After content is translated, it must be re-integrated with the product.  Re-integration involves several cycles of software builds and Quality Assurance, culminating in a build that is submitted to the customer for review.  We respond to customer feedback with detailed impact analysis; any suggested changes that the client finds acceptable in terms of time and cost are incorporated into the final product.

2.5     Quality Assurance

Our multilingual Quality Assurance testing involves both linguistic and usability issues, as well as certification on localized platforms.  Where localized platforms are not available, performs additional scrutiny of linguistic integrity, consistency and product performance. Testing is performed using customer test scripts or scripts developed by and a full test report is generated.  If necessary, requirements that arise from testing can be implemented software engineers and testers.

Our QA services include the following:

       Software QA plans.

       Development, review, execution, and updating of test scripts.

       Engineering, compilation, and debugging of software and help files.

       Functional, configuration, and beta testing of products.

       Generation and testing of online documentation.

       Production of golden "final release to manufacturing" diskette and CD-ROM media.

       Development of automated procedures to streamline the project engineering process.

When a product consists of software, documentation and help, three different QA procedures should be applied:

Software: After every build cycle (alpha, beta, and gold), a linguist should look at the user interface before delivery to the client to make sure there are no errors, truncations or un-translated text in dialog boxes and menus.

Documentation: After the first and second DTP stages, a linguist should proof the printed files in order to make sure that everything is in the right place, the page breaks are correct, and all graphics are in the correct language. These steps also include software consistency checks, to ensure that all software terms in the manual match the running software.

Help: The compiled help should be checked by a linguist to make sure all links point to the correct topics. QA of the help files requires software consistency checking as well.

For the final QA of Documentation and Help, it is vital that the running software is available. A linguist needs to have all components of a product in mind, and maintain consistency between all of them.

2.6            QA Database and Bug Classification

Bugs are classified  by severity, from highest-priority “crash” bugs to lower-priority cosmetic bugs. The following is the classification used within the QA Database:

1.   Functional Crash program termination, or unavailability of major subsections of the program. The bug will affect most users. The program cannot be released with one of these.

2.   Functional Moderately severe. Functionality broken, but program runs; certain features may be unavailable to user. Also major UI bugs, e.g. wrong numerical format, top-level string truncations.

3. Non-functional UI serious. Incorrect numerical, date, time formats; broken hotlinks; corrupted graphics.

4. Non-functional UI minor. Spelling errors; minor cosmetic and layout bugs.

Our Quality Assurance Reports make sure that:

       The right text is translated

       The translation is accurate

       There are no problems in the source texts

       All the menus, dialog boxes, toll tips, string tables and bitmaps are translated

       The translation of the menus is consistent with the online help and manuals

       All of the menus and dialog accelerators unique and consistent

       The dialog boxes are properly sized

       All of the context-sensitive help links are functioning correctly

       All of the hyper-links in the online documents are functioning correctly

       The application responds properly to the changes in operating system locale settings

       The application works correctly on the local hardware and operating system with all the specific local nuances.

 The conclusion of your project doesn't mean that our work for you comes to an end.

3. Engineering Issues

There are many topics for the localizer to consider. In this review of our localization methodology, we are deliberately omitting some issues that are more relevant to software specification and design. Instead we discuss some problems that a simple translation of text does not solve, but that the software itself must deal with.

3.1            Character Handling

The most essential problem in preparing software that will deal with non-American languages is ensuring that computer hardware and software can handle all non-American characters. In Arabic, for example, there are many characters that have different forms at the beginning of a word than at the middle or end, or when in isolation . The product must handle such variation if Arabic is the target language.

3.2            Subsystems

Software systems sometimes consist of subsystems created by a third-party developer, which can cause a lack of coordination between different components within the system (e.g. between a word processor and a spell checker or a dictionary). One of our tasks in this case would be to straighten out such underlying incompatibilities. 

Another example is the operating system. If you name a file within your product using non-American characters before you save it, your filename may be changed because the operating system may fail to recognize extended characters and mis-convert the name. Equally important is the effect of the cut, copy, paste, and move commands.  We need to make certain that all non-American characters survive these operations.

3.3            Importing and Exporting the Whole Character Set

Some characters have traditionally been reserved for use by computer-system developers (e.g. line feed and carriage return). A similar situation exists with other types of character sets. If your system ignores them or strips them out of the data stream, then you cannot perform the operations that depend on this part of the character set. In addition, most software these days is delivered in a compressed or compacted form; therefore, data compressors and decompressors must also be able to handle the entire character set.

3.4     Sorting

Another problem that is not immediately obvious arises from sorting procedures based on different sets of characters. The traditional sorting method in U.S. programs was to sort by numerical value, but this is no longer adequate because the rules for different languages simply cannot be implemented by using American traditional methods. In languages other than English, with double characters that sort as one combined character, the problem becomes far more complicated.  For example, in Spanish, ch,  a double character, is treated as a separate single character and is ordered after c and before d.For instance, in a Spanish encyclopedia, “Chinese” would come after “Czech” (though before “Danish”).   

As we have seen, one of the most important features required for localization is the computer’s or the operating system’s ability to represent characters, particularly those that do not appear in American English.

Search and Replace, Case Conversion, Hyphenation, Word and Character Boundaries. These issues also require special attention and systematic efforts from our localization team.

For example, in Western languages, character boundaries are a hardware issue. However, if the system uses graphic mode and generates its fonts from software, then the character boundaries must be tracked by the software. For cursive scripts like Arabic, Farsi, and Urdu, there is a marked difference in the widths of the letters, and proportional spacing is required for printing. Descenders may be much bigger in these languages, and some of the characters may require more space than Roman characters.

3.5     Expansion of Text

It should be expected that translated text requires more characters than the original American English text. Some of the extra characters may very well include spaces. For example, Update translates into Mettre à  jour in French. The introduction of spaces or blanks may lead to other problems. For instance, if Update variable is translated into Mettre à  jour variable, the parsing procedure might still be expecting the value for the variable to occur after the first space.

Parsing. If your software obtains information from analyzing input data, then special attention should be given to those segments of the software that do the analysis. Unless the input information is organized or coded according to some standard that does not change from local to locale, we will have to reprogram those parts of software that perform parsing.

Other important issues that we take care of during localization include Keyboards, Entry of Non-Keyboard Characters, Diacritical Marks, Tracking, Kerning, Address Formats, Translation of Filenames, Numeric Formats, Separators, Arithmetic Operations, Monetary Symbols and Currency, Page Sizes, Colors, Cultural Considerations, Translation of Icons and Clip Art.

Pointing Devices. It is possible that some pointing devices, such as mice, will not work in other countries , either because the driver software has not been modified to work in non-American environments, or because the messages and documentation have not been localized.

Setup and Installation Procedures. Since file sizes of the localized software will be different, the installation procedures and setup programs will need to be modified. Moreover, the programs involved in installation and setup may themselves need to be localized, and any file compression/decompression routines must be checked to ensure that they can handle extended characters.

3.6     Updates. 

As with the initial localization effort, we makes every effort to synchronize updates with customer product releases.  For updates, it is necessary to do a file comparison and determine how many words have been added and deleted.

Depending on the scope of updates, it is necessary to decide whether to modify the previously localized files or on the new source files. If the updates are substantial, it is often easier to copy and paste previously used translations into the new files; if the update is small, the new text can be pasted into the previously localized files. This decision has to be made on an individual basis.

A distinction must be made between software updates and documentation/help updates. If, in addition to text changes, there are also code changes in the software files, it is advisable to use the new source files to make sure there is no missing code (or old code) in the final localized files.
 

4. Conclusion

4.1     Internationalization

is the ideal precursor to localization.  We works with customers at the development stage to prepare their products for future localization into any language. Even though software localization requirements may not be part of initial engineering specifications, we recommends that the following internalization criteria be considered early in the development process:

       Bi-directionality of text, needed for Hebrew, Farsi and Arabic language support;

       Multi-byte character support (Unicode);

       Isolation of icons, menus, cursors, bitmaps, dialog boxes, and string tables from the main source code, making it possible to localize the User Interface  for other languages without the need to recompile the main binary.

With the customer, we proactively explore such issues as acronyms, abbreviations and metaphors; the framework for demos; cultural and industrial requirements; and naming conventions for files and directories.  Designing with the appropriate locale model ensures that conventions such as calendar layouts, date and time formats, numeric and financial representation, weights and measures, capitalization and case-sensitivity can be easily localized.  Particular attention is paid to key locations or sequences that support international hardware, and string comparisons and sorting routines that consume additional processing time in other languages due to extended character sets.  Third-party custom controls that cannot display accented or multi-byte characters correctly, or that interfere with resizing because they do not support in-place display of text in resource editors, are discussed with the customer.  These are only a few of the issues resolvable in development.  We helps customers create and maintain one internationalized code base applicable for all language versions, varying only relative to its resource set.

4.2     Internet Site Creation and Multimedia Design and Production

Are performed by either directly with customers, or in collaboration with customer-specified design agencies.  By applying an internationalized approach to these services, helps customers create an artistic, global or country-specific standard that supports their corporate identity and product branding.

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