1. Globalization, Localization etc Taken from several sources

2. Globalization Outline Bad Examples Why Important Issues Principles How to Do It – Tools, Lifecycle WWW Resources

3. Bad Examples – Excuse My French Look at the menus Look at the dialog box Incomplete translation !

4. Bad Examples – We Are the World? What do you mean that you don’t have a state? What do you mean that you don’t have a zip code? –Some other countries use “postal code” This is US-centric – especially if fields are required!

5. Bad Examples – The Sun Never Sets on the British Empire? The user swears that this is really how you spell customize Even within a given language – such as English – there are variations British/Australians spell a lot of words differently than we do More US-centricism Good Example – Microsoft recognizes Catalan

6. Bad Examples – If the Shoe Fits? That button fit the word “Preview”, but not “Vista Preliminar” Some languages tend to take more letters than others in general Some languages might not have exactly the right word and need a phrase Oh, BTW – is “Scan” a Spanish word?

7. Why Worry About It? Profits –Population US – 300,000,000 World – 6,000,000,000 –Growing World-Wide Market –Competition –But make sure business case exists Public Relations Legal Requirements

8. Levels of Globalization Concerns Comprehensibility Usability Desirability These move from easier to harder

9. Globalization Issues special characters – e.g. ä, ñ, ø Left-to-right versus right-to-left Date and time formats Numeric and currency formats Weights and measures Telephone numbers and addresses Names and titles (Mr., Ms., Mme.) ID numbers Capitalization and punctuation Sorting sequences Icons, buttons, colors Pluralization, grammar, spelling Culture, Etiquette, policies, tone, formality, metaphors

10. Principles

11. Culture includes … Surface – visible – including simple things like currency, date and time formats, and more complex – dress, family relationships Unspoken rules Unconscious rules

12. Format Give users chance to express preferences for format for –dates, –time, –currency, –Numbers –Address –Phone numbers

13. Color E.g. sacred colors vary Meanings of Colors differ – see Table 10.2 on p 577 Look out for color combinations associated with political movements

14. Metaphor GUI / Direct Manipulation approach is based on analogy to real world objects Danger for globalization – if the objects are not the same world-wide E.g. mailbox icon, telephone E.g. typewriter metaphor in word processing – but Japanese and Chinese rarely used E.g. file folders don’t look the same in China, in India, think more in terms of bookshelf, books, chapters …

15. Symbols Avoid use of pictures of sports equipment, national monuments, symbols that would be unfamiliar to members of other cultures Symbols meaning may be culturally dependent Be cautious with use of animals, religious symbols, national flags, colors, hand gestures, stereotypical people Watch out for cultural expectations regarding gender, racial stereotypes etc Avoid use of culture specific holiday symbols Use ToolTips to explain any icons that could be ambiguous Check more universal than X Emoticons (such as ) vary – e.g. Japanese (^_^)

16. Symbols Consider using universal signs Some (not all computer relevant) -

17. Sound Be careful with sounds – consider possible meaning

18. Legal Environments Laws differ from country to country E.g. in some countries it is illegal to directly position your product against the competition

19. Unspoken Rules E.g. Japanese find disembodied body parts unappealing (Marcus et al 1999)

20. Humor Is very culturally dependent May be dependent on language Doesn’t tend to work well cross culturally

21. Language Language can greatly affect the length of text. Save room Modify keyboard mnemonics to fit target languages It is difficult to handle translation if the program concatenates strings on-the-fly as the program is running Use simple syntax – noun-verb-object Use consistent terminology – makes for easier translation Try to stay away from words with multiple meanings Visual puns may not translate Avoid difficult noun phrases (e.g. 3 nouns in a row) Avoid abbreviations and acronyms Avoid slang Avoid use of letters in bitmaps and toolbar icons

22. Language Avoid overly friendly style, which may be interpreted as condescending Watch out for gender, racial, national stereotypes etc If no translation exists in a language, use the original word Layout should follow left-to-right vs. right-to-left vs. vertical pattern of reading –Microsoft Windows 2000/XP localization of Hebrew and Arabic handle right to left – but ensure that your application is “mirroring aware so that text is not “flipped” Sorting sequences – where special characters, such as ñ, ä, å, ë, and even the Spanish ll, fit in alphabetical order Remember that help files must be translated Microsoft translates first to German, then Arabic, then Japanese

23. Examples avoid culturally specific examples

24. Functional Requirements May vary from location to location (e.g. need for user control and initiative may vary in different cultures)

25. Details, Details When planning printed reports, consider European paper size (A4) Are specified fonts available for wide range of languages?

26. Globalization in the Lifecycle Starts user analysis – identifying user communities and their characteristics Followed with identifying the requirements – what varies – and of those, what is important/ worthwhile Include people internationally in feedback process – requirements determination –Usability inspection – usability testing –Beta testing Ensure developers are familiar with globalization issues Ensure test team can recognize globalization problems Planning should specifically identify globalization impacts – to avoid surprises and cost-overruns later Some effort produces more globalized result than no effort

27. What about the WWW? Log files can show geographical distribution of current visitors Usability testing can be done without leaving home Can start site with language choice. E.g. http://www.yahoo.com/ http://www.yahoo.com/ Language-specific start pages should have their own URLs Also provide means to specify language on other pages When showing times – give 1) where; 2) relationship to GMT; and 3) other known cities Consider bandwidth If e-commerce offerings differ from country to country – make sure user gets appropriate choices

28. WWW Language Strategies Store user’s language preference in a client-side cookie Encoding the Language code in the URL Storing user language preference in user profile Using pre-generated pages

29. Tools Microsoft Locales – in Windows, –“a locale is a set of user preference information related to the user’s language, environment, and cultural conventions. This information is represented as a list of values used to determine the correct input language, keyboard layout, sorting order, and the formats used for numbers, dates, currencies, and time” –Windows 2000 and XP support 126 and 136 locales –Can specify user locale, input locale, and system locale –Windows User Interface can be displayed in different languages – 90% localized

30. Tools VB, Visual C++, Java all provide some support Unicode necessary to store larger character sets

31. Machine Translation

32. Localizing Ensure user interface text is isolated from code – put in files Store multiple versions of same string if used more than one place Avoid text in bitmaps and icons Do not generate text strings on-the-fly Test localized applications on all language variants

33. Resources - Corporate Microsoft – http://www.microsoft.com/globaldev/http://www.microsoft.com/globaldev/

34. Resources – Corporate Consultants www.amanda.com/resources/HFWEB99/HFWEB99.Marcus.html www.useit.com - Jakob Nielsen’s site – several pages relevantwww.useit.com

35. Resources - Academic www.acm.org/sigchi/bulletin/1996.3/international.html http://eies.njit.edu/~turoff/coursenotes/CIS732/samplepro/use r_interface_internationalizat.htmhttp://eies.njit.edu/~turoff/coursenotes/CIS732/samplepro/use r_interface_internationalizat.htm

36. Resources - Organizations http://www.w3.org/International http://Dmoz.org/Computers/Software/Globalization/

37. Resources - WWW

38. End Globalization