Internationalization, a major differentiation factor on a competitive market

In an era where geographical boundaries have all but faded away, and products can be launched in just a few months on different markets, most software developers now design their products with internationalization in mind. In fact, the ability to support multiple languages on early releases now represents a major differentiation factor in today's highly competitive market.
All the main frameworks and development platforms in use today are localization-friendly: Unicode, HTML, XML, and libraries. However, there are some key considerations to keep in mind, such as language direction (right-to-left), multi-byte character set support, or GUI space restrictions. Different languages use different syntactic structures; elements for translation should thus be clearly identified or externalized into libraries. In order to remain cost efficient over time, integrating key localization aspects into the software right from its initial conception is essential.
WhP has been working with the international software market's leaders since 1994. Fully proficient in identifying a project's key localization elements, WhP is able to advise its customers on the best practices for their production process.

What does software localization entail?

For WhP, software localization involves much more than simply translating a software module's User Interface (UI); it concerns a fully consistent set of components:

• The main software modules (inter-related)
• Ancillary software components such as installation, configuration, plug-ins, patches, etc
• Online help linked to the UI
• Manuals (installation guide, user’s manual, getting started, configuration guide)
• Complementary documents (registration, disclaimers, posters, leaflets, summaries, etc.) delivered with the software
• Training material (classroom courses, computer-based training, e-learning)
• Technical support material (web site, FAQ, help desk scripts, etc.)

Our clients’ localization requirements

Software publishers set up their production process to best suit their strategy and markets. They usually expect the localization vendor to adapt to their processes.
In addition to the flexibility required to accommodate these processes, software companies seek overall quality, which mainly means terminology quality. Terminology has to be:

• Consistent: the same object or concept must be named consistently throughout all the components and all the different software versions.
• Compliant with either official standards or de facto standards.
• Pertinent, especially when new concepts are being implemented where no history exists in other languages; this is especially important for Asian languages.

Our clients request efficiency and productivity through the proper use of the best technology and people for their specific requirements.

Technology and tools

WhP selects the tools that are the most effective for the customer. This will often include specific tools either designed by the customer or by WhP, as well as third party localization tools:

• WhP engineers are fully proficient in all localization and terminology tools, and in translation memory environments such as Trados, Idiom and many others.
• For resource localization and WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) dialog box resizing, we usually use Catalyst, RC Wintrans or Passolo.
• For compiling online help, we often use standard tools such as Robohelp.
• For Quality Assurance, we use the most appropriate tools (spell checker, grammar checker, terminology checker, etc.), depending on the languages concerned.

For more information, request our White Paper "Software Localization".