Internationalization Localization

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Internationalization Localization Unicode

• Karunesh Arora
• Vijay Gugnani
• C-DAC Noida

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Everyone has the right... to seek, receive and
impart information and ideas through any media
regardless of frontiers -- Universal
Declaration of Human Rights
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Internationalization

• Internationalization, which is often referred
  as i18n, depicts the practice of designing and
  developing a application, product or document in
  a way that makes it easily localizable for target
  audiences that vary in culture, region, or
  language.

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Why Internationalization?

• To remove barriers to local and international
  access
• Adaptation to local, regional, linguistic or
  cultural needs.
• To provide global reach
• ROI, Revenue generation

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Internationalization Vs. Localization

• Localization is the actual adaptation to meet
  the language, cultural, and other requirements
  for specific target audience.
• While internationalization gives us the
  technology and tools to target a given audience,
  its the act of localization that makes it
  accessible.

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What goes with localization?

• Localization is much more than translation.
• Specifically, localization refers to adaptation
  to other language, which involves appropriate
• Language Translation
• Locale transformation and Cultural aspects

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Language Translation
Languages and Countries

• Most languages are used in many countries, not
  just those where they are dominant or official
• People migrate and take languages with them
• Over enough time, most languages evolve
  differently in different locations

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Scripts and Languages
Language Translation

• A script may be defined as collection of
  related characters
• It is common for several languages to share most,
  but not all characters from a given script
• Scripts are often given the same name as one of
  the languages that uses them
• Arabic script, but Arabic, Farsi, Urdu,
  languages
• Scripts are also given common name for a group of
  languages
• Devanagri script for Hindi, Marathi, Nepali,
  Konkani etc.

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Language Translation
Some Points to consider

• Identify Translatable and Non-translatable
  strings
• Gender and number agreement, ordering of segments
  in a sentence
• e.g. Page number -gt
• e.g. Number of pages -gt
• Many languages can take at least 30 more
  space Tool
• ????? (HI) ?????? - customer (EN)
• Design should be compatible, or else the UI may
  have to be redesigned
• Narrow columns often cannot accommodate long
  Target language equivalent words

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Language Translation
Some Points to consider Contd.

• Avoid ambiguous phrases
• Display options
• Options of the display -- as Noun Noun
• Show the options (all of them) as Verb Noun
• Proverbs and metaphors may not have equivalents
  in target language
• Keep Web pages and paragraphs short.
• Avoid text in graphics.
• Use simple grammatical structures.
• Use everyday language.
• Provide clues.

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Language Translation
Some Points to consider Contd.

• Follow source language conventions.
• Avoid acronyms.
• Abbreviations may have to be expanded when
  translated
• Check spelling and grammar.
• The more compact the source writing, the longer
  the Translation
• Brief translators about the purpose and target
  audience
• All items in a menu or set of check boxes should
  have the same grammatical structure

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Locale

• Set of parameters that define the users
  language, country and cultural preferences

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Different aspects of locale

• Names Titles
• Calendars,
• Numeric, Date and Time formats, Addresses,
• Currencies, Paper size, Weights measures
• Input Mechanism,
• Language Selection,
• Oral Pronunciation

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Titles and Names

• In India, it is required to specify
  etc.)
• these titles do not necessarily translate
• Family name is not always last (In South West
  part of country)
• Sorting can be based on last name or first
• Salutations in letters (e.g. Dear) are different
  in different locales e.g.

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Titles and Names
Source Delhi Press Prakashan
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Calendars

• The Gregorian calendar should not always be
  assumed
• Proper localization of some software requires the
  use (at least as an option) of calendars distinct
  to a culture
• E.g. Vikram Samvat/ Saka / Hijri calendar in
  India
• Calendars of various religions where year 0 was
  not 2006 years ago
• Fiscal-year based calendars vary widely
• Some have 13 months (364/28) or 53 weeks

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Date formats

• Date separators depend on locale /, -, .
• am and pm are not used universally (many
  cultures use 24 hour clock)
• ISO standard dates are unambiguous yyyy-mm-dd
  hhmmss
• Non ISO date 01-03-02 means different things in
  different locales.
• If not using ISO, then display dates in the
  locale of the user
• Preferably use a long form with the month
  spelled out (in the correct language)

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Formatting Numbers

• locale dependent, not the language of application
• Group separation
• Number of digits in a group
• In English and ISO it is 3 while for Indic
  languages its different 1,23,456 i.e.
  ,,,
• Group separator
• In English ,, but ISO uses space, and some
  locales use . or none
• Decimal separator ., ., ,
• Negative symbol -, , ()

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Currency

• Use the currency symbol of the data
• i.e. INR doesnt automatically translate to or
  when the locale changes
• Format depends on the users locale, not the
  currency
• Differences in formats
• Symbol
• Position (before or after the currency)
• Blanks separating the symbol from the data

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Currency contd

• Different ways of expressing Rs. 1000
• Rs.1000 OR Rs. 1000/- or Rs.1,000/- or Rs.
  1000.00
• INR 1000
• 1000 Rupees 1000 ?????
• Strong currencies like Indian need decimal
  precision (e.g. 2 digits after the decimal point
  for paisa)

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Language selection

• Avoid using national flags to choose preferred
  language
• Multiple countries use the same language
• Display of language selection order?
• Language of displaying languages ?
• In the language itself, or with a translation in
  the default language of the operating system

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Pronunciation

• Important for Speech based systems
• Higher recognition accuracy can be obtained by
  tailoring voice input to regional dialects
• Voice output in the wrong dialect can make an
  application sound foreign
• Applications supported with regional dialects
  have better impact

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Culture

• Culture is a complex collection of experiences
  which condition daily life
• It includes
• history,
• social structure,
• geographical effects,
• religion,
• traditional customs and everyday usage.

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Cultural issues

• Icons, symbols and images
• Colors, myths, beliefs and feelings
• Humour
• Geographical environmental effects
• Customs traditions
• Social Security Numbers

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Icons Symbols

• Icons that are a play on words do not translate
• e.g.
• A dust bin for dumping files
• A rocket for launching an application
• A scissors for cutting in edit operation
• B, I, U
• Some concepts have been found extremely hard to
  represent as an icon
• E.g. Sorting (A-gtZ is not universal)
• Images of people or body parts such as hands
• Considered inappropriate in some cultures
• What skin color do you use?
• People Images need to be localized for each
  country

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Colors Humour

• The color white may represent purity and green
  prosperity in the Indian context, but it may not
  be the same in another culture.
• Humour generally does not get translated
• People are sensitive to different things in
  different cultures
• Jokes/cartoons can be offensive

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Customs Traditions

• In the Indian culture, people show respect to
  their elders and renowned personalities by
  addressing them in plural.
• e.g. Dr. Manmohan Singh is the prime minister
  of India.
• ??. ?????? ???? ???? ?? ???????????? ????
• Similarly, in social relationships, there are
  several words to address a relation
• e.g. for uncle - ????, ???, ????

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Unicode?
Unicode provides a unique number for every
character, no matter what the platform,no
matter what the program,no matter what the
language.
Source http//unicode.org
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Universal Character Encoding

• Unique number for every character

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Unifies all Languages

• 96 thousand characters, so far
• All characters accessible at the same time, in
  the same document
• ?, ?, ?,

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Wide Spread Support

• Developed supported by industry leaders
• Apple, HP, IBM, JustSystem, Microsoft, Oracle,
  SAP, Sun, Sybase, Unisys,
• Supported in standards
• XML, HTML, Java, ECMAScript (JavaScript), LDAP,
  CORBA 3.0, WML, Perl, etc.
• Implemented in
• All modern operating systems, browsers, and other
  products

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IDN

• http//????.in

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Information about Unicode

• www.unicode.org
• Online Standard
• Technical Reports
• FAQs
• General Information
• Discussion Forums, Conferences

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Resources Availability

• System APIs
• Windows, Java, Unix, Oracle, DB2, Sybase, Mac,
  Linux,
• Languages
• Java, JavaScript, C, Perl 5.6.0, C, C, SQL,
• Cross-platform libraries
• ICU, Rosette,

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Indic Support in Unicode

• ISCII the basis for characters and allocation
• DIT is member of Consortium
• Reports have been submitted on missing
  characters, clarifications or corrections of usage

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ISCII Similarities

• Within script, layout and contents nearly
  identical
• Independent dependent vowels
• Halant model for representing conjuncts
• conjuncts / half-forms not directly encoded
• represented by sequences instead
• Phonetic sequence order in syllables

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ISCII Differences

• Unicode is stateless
• No shifting to get different scripts
• Each character has a unique number
• Unicode is uniform
• No extension bytes necessary
• All characters coded in the same space

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Advantages

• Accessible Information across the globe
• Seamless multilingual documents
• Opens up software export market, beyond English
• Connects India to the world

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The Future

• The world is moving rapidly to Unicode
• Unicode makes India open to the world
• The world comes to you, and
• You go to the world

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Multiple Forms

• UTF-8 maximal compatibility with 8-bit systems
• UTF-16 good storage, interoperability with
  Windows/Java
• UTF-32 simplest processing
• Fast, lossless conversion

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W3C Internationalization Activity
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Some Issues under discussion in IL

• Presentation / Styling issues
• Styling of first character
• If some styling feature is to be applied to the
  starting character, then whether it will be
  applied to a single character, conjunct
  character, a syllable or a Grapheme cluster.
• e.g.

?????? (Position) ???????? (Departure)
???? (Vowel) ??? (Dictionary)
????? (Hindi)
?????? (Hindi)
?????????  (Regional)
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Some Issues under discussion in IL

• Presentation / Styling issues
• Styling of first character

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Some Issues under discussion in IL

• Presentation / Styling issues
• In Cursive Text
• like Arabic and Urdu
• the styling is applied
• to whole word

Saabiq -gt Former
Urdu
Source Rashtriya Sahara
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Some Issues under discussion in IL

• Presentation / Styling issues
• Vertical arrangement of characters
• If some string is written in vertical mode,
  then writing each character on a new line may not
  be suitable

http//www.w3.org/International/notes/firstletter.
html
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Some Issues under discussion in IL

• Presentation / Styling issues
• Horizontal spacing
• e.g.

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Some Issues under discussion in IL

• Presentation / Styling issues
• Bullets and numbers
• Number schemes to be supported in Indian
  languages also.

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Some Issues under discussion in IL

• Presentation / Styling issues
• Collation
• A means to search and order data in a way that
  makes sense in their particular culture
• Myths - One collation is good enough
• Unicode enabled sorting is already
  covered

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Some Issues in Indian Languages

• Presentation / Styling issues

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Some Issues under discussion in IL

• Presentation issues
• Underlining of the characters
• ???? ?????? ??? ?? ??????

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Some Issues

• Searching issues
• Problem in searching in languages sharing same
  script and some words being same but semantically
  different

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Issues on presentation on other devices

• Addressing Input mechanism, predictive input for
  vernacular languages
• Handling display issues in Hand held devices with
  smaller screen, in cases of translation
• Standardizing encoding issues in communication
  for taking care of cost of bandwidth (ISCII /
  Unicode / Compressed Unicode), connectivity and
  on-the-fly conversion of encodings

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References and acknowledgements

• http//www.w3.org/international
• Articles by Richard Ishida, Felix Sasaki, W3C
• http//macchiato.com/slides/UnicodeAndIndia.ppt ,
  Presentation by Mark Davis
• www.site.uottawa.ca/ftppub/courses/Winter/csi5122/
  coursenotes/5122Internationalization.ppt

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• Thank you