A software product that has been localized properly has the look and feel of a product originally written and designed for the target market. Here are just a number of points that have to be considered, as well as the language, in order to effectively localize a software product or website: measuring units, number formats, address formats, time and date formats (long and short), paper sizes, fonts, default font selection, case differences, character sets, sorting, word separation and hyphenation, local regulations, copyright issues, data protection, payment methods, currency conversion, taxes.
The standard localization process includes the following basic steps:
- Analysis of the material received and evaluation of the tools and resources required for localization
- Cultural, technical and linguistic assessment
- Creation and maintenance of terminology glossaries
- Translation to the target language
- Adaptation of the user interface, including resizing of forms and dialogs, as required
- Localization of graphics, scripts or other media containing visible text, symbols, etc.
- Compilation and build of the localized files for testing
- Linguistic and functional quality assurance
- Project delivery