Localization and Internationalization
Written by There was a post on TechCrunch yesterday regarding MySpace and Facebook’s inability to penetrate into a market like Japan. In the post it says it took a long time for translation (Internationalization) to happen, but more importantly the site that works here in the US market isn’t catered to that of another global market.
With my clients now, it has become important to build sites with global aspects in mind. Previously, clients just wanted an English based site, which for most businesses based in the US, is probably just fine. For more complex projects like social networking, developing the site with this in mind early makes for a much easier task than trying to do it later. This was seen by how long it took Facebook to get up to speed. Translations take a long time so knowing what you want to do in the beginning can be a great help.
As for Localization this is a little bit harder. There’s a lot more research that needs to take place in order for your site to look and feel just right for your target audience.
So the terminology Localization (L10n) and Internationalization (I18n) gets mixed up at times and people believe them to be the same thing. In general clients think Localization is your website translated into another language so that the target country can understand the content. This is actually part of Internationalization. Internationalization covers language, number formatting, dates, times, currency, etc. Localization deals with catering the site to the target market. An example of this may be a picture of the Golden Gate Bridge here in America, but using a graphic of the Great Wall in China.
Overall, I think it’s great that people are looking to expand their site to different markets. It’s also good that clients see that they want to do this up front which makes it a lot easier. Don’t get me wrong though, the way we design sites, we can always do the translation after the project is complete, it just always seems to be planned better knowing beforehand.