Observations and Recommendations on the Internationalisation of Software

As computer programs enter the lives of more and more people worldwide, it is becoming increasingly unacceptable to assume that software with a user interface designed for an indigenous English speaking market will be acceptable outside its country of origin simply by changing the currency symbol. Developers of software who are serious about expanding sales into new markets must consider many issues when giving thought either to the creation of new software or the modification of existing software to work within the linguistic and cultural constraints of these new markets. The purpose of this paper is to examine the task of preparing software to be used in countries and cultures other than that in which it is created. We do this by reviewing some of the most important localisation issues that have been identified, and some of the tools and practices that are available to the software designer to deal with them. We shall also consider some of the areas of the software development process that are currently less well understood and supported. Our major emphasis is in non-graphical applications targeted at European markets. Keywords: Internationalisation, I18N, Localising, Enabling, Multi-lingual.