Localization and Internationalization

Localization is defined as the linguistic and cultural adaptation of explicitly digital content that is in line with the needs of a specific foreign market. It includes services and technologies for the management of multilingualism across digital global information. Localization deals with the translation of digital materials, including user assistance, websites, video games, etc., and a wide range of activities. As an instrument for companies, it allows them to unlock their global market opportunities and reach their globalization goals. Thus, their localization decision is based on the market they target, instead of the number of speakers of a particular language. Thus, publishers are more likely to localize their content into less spoken European languages compared to, for instance, some of the widely spoken languages in Asia.

With the rising usage of translation technologies generated by the information-based economy, the boundary between translation and localization has become somewhat transcendent, rendering it harder to define. Localization projects deal with anything, including applications, rapidly changing web content, and other types of consumer content. The content is mostly multimodal, as it can be in various formats such as text, graphics, audio, or video. This leads to content being highly repetitive, and this issue is usually alleviated by older versions of the same base product. As the increasing demand challenges the capacities of content publishers, they focus instead on standards and process improvements, introducing translation management systems (TMS). They also resort to internationalization and reuse of previously used material to achieve the required efficiency in terms of both time and quality. In some cases, a lingua franca can be used as a mediator, but translation services are often preferred.

The translation was initially not high on the priority list of publishers. But the type of digital content being published changed with the demands for on-time localization since customers now demand the content be available in their language without any further delay. This puts considerable pressure on the translation industry to translate quickly. Internationalization, in this regard, refers to the preparation of digital content for use in different languages and easy localization. Thanks to it, the localization effort publishers had to make was dramatically reduced, and costly software re-engineering and testing activities were eliminated. Over time, the reuse of previous translations became the main strategy to cut down on translation costs and time.

Each localization project has its challenges that might require fine-tuning, but all have common aspects. Before the process of localization can begin, a series of questions have to be raised, such as whether the content can be localized or internationalized, or if it requires specific development stages. The next step is preparation, which involves the preparation of source and target material, style guides, and a general outline of the project. As for translation, it is not entirely done by translators, thanks to translation memory and machine translation systems. In some cases, post-editing is required instead of translation. Translators have to rely on computer-aided tools to work on large-scale and multiple projects. Finally, digital content has to be analyzed and tested, so that it does not contain any flaws before it can be published.