Software vNext going global !!!
Joshua Malik
Jerric Lyns John
Orion India Systems Pvt. Ltd.

Softwares are getting
Internationalized
Tim Dodd

What’s the problem?
Tim Dodd
It’s not the “NP-Complete” problem!
1. “It’s a huge problem if you have not
thought of it”
2. “If you have thought of it, then it’s just the
beginning”

What’s the problem?
Kleine Moewe
Well, it’s the HARD problem of design.
1. Internationalization is the problem!
I. Languages
II. Time Zones
III. Formats

Your software has to offer same usability to all!
Mathew Roth

Localization matters !!!
Eric Fisher

We’ll have to deal with countries
and they might not prefer ENGLISH

Like countries who attended Tito’s funeral,
almost every countries did!

Initial Solution
We could make the software speak only
ENGLISH.
Sunc

That’s a problem?
We could make the software accept only
ENGLISH. That’s okay until “Beyoncé
Knowles” comes into the picture.
Sunc

Solution is !Unicode!
But for name if someone enters a control
character sequence that will break the
system.
Slash

System Crashed!
Control characters in UNICODE are bad
“home-wrecks”
We could always “contain” the control
characters
That’s 30,000+ if you include Mandarin,
Cantonese etc..
Kleine Moewe

Since you have Unicode, why not make it
International !
Iceman

Problem: Static UI
Lets say your MenuBar was marked up with
static width.
This will break the UI once translated
Solution: Make it flexible

Problem: Composition
You could out source all the words used by
the your software to be translated
a.k.a string composition
Well, that works!
Until the Italians turn up!
Venice

Problem: Composition
Their translation requires gender, the
translated word changes accordingly.
Solution:
Provide gender (Male, Female) along
with the Resource files
Caveat:
I have to ask user for their gender!
Venice

Problem: Gender
Just Male+Female as gender is a problem!
The Swiss activist group Zwischengeschlecht
(“Between Genders”), they‘ll file a case
against you. Now that Germany and
Australia has made it official gender (X)
Solution: Provide and extra gender!
Zwischengesch.

Problem: Plurals
English: Singular + Plural
There are languages where:
Singular + Dual + Plural exists
Poland: Pausal+Plural (ending 2,3,4)+Plurals
Romania: Different plural for anything more
than 20
Tomas Melka

Problem: UpperCase
Germany: Sometimes the upper case letter
is “2 letters”
What?
Yes, and sometimes it doesn’t change, like
that of geographic names
Armin Hoffman

Problem: Ctd…
We all use excerpts where we represent only
some words of a long file and the rest with
dots…
GCC (The Gulf): Those dots will change the
meaning in Arabic
What?
Yes, also the text is right-to-left!
(Arabic/Hebrew), also names are from “left-
to-right” in between the “right-to-lefts”
Eugene

BANG!
From now on read it as
1. “I’m so dumb”
2. “I shouldn’t have done that”
3. “I really shouldn’t have done that”
4. “Now what do we do”
Kleine Moewe

Date/Time/Format matters !!!
Atlas Maritimus

Problem: Date format
USA: MM DD YYYY
UK: DD MM YYYY
USA: Week starts at “Sunday”
UK: Week starts at “Monday”
Andrea

Problem: Time format
USA: 12hr clock
Europe/Brazil: 24hr clock
Zeek

Problem: Numbers
Europe: 100,000,000.000,00
USA: 100,000,000
India: 10,00,00,000
Farms8

Kleine Moewe
Problem: Language
Changes in languages are subtle and unique
and it’s complex.
So what do we do?
Good Question!

Time Zones matters !!!
mtyto

Time calculations
Usually we calculate time differences based
on the time zones (which is +/- an offset
towards Greenwich)
Australia: +9 ½ hours
Nepal: +5 ¼ hours
This is simple get the canonical time zone
chart and implement it!
Zeek

Daylight savings
Advancing clocks during respective season
(autumn/spring/summer) so as to get more
daylight.
That’s okay every countries involve in this
process documents this well in advance. We
just have to update it to our system!
Worst part some advance, some goes back!
Libya is no more daylight saving after 2013
Catklien

Skipping a day!
Somoa: they skipped a day to move to
western side of international dateline to
keep their business running with Australia
What?
From 29 December, 2011 to 31 December
2011
These changing of time zones happen quiet
often! But they keep it updated too..
Somoa

Changing of time zone
Britain : 1940-1945 – gmt+2
(Greenwich is in Britain)
Time Zone changes happens quiet often.
Like at several times a year
Mtyto

History and time
We shifted calendar in 18th century from
Julian calendar to Gregorian calendar
We literally missed(skipped) 3 weeks in
between that.
Russians did that in 20th century
Now this change is location based.

History and time
16th century : Once upon a time, the year
started at 25th of March
So how do we calculate time prior to that?
Atlas Maritimus

BANG!
Now that’s perfectly confusing every living
developers!
Kleine Moewe

Astrophysicst and time
Leap second: As tectonic plates move about
the earth’s speed increases and decreases.
This leads to calculations in time correction
by the International Astronomical Union
i.e. 23:59:59 to 00:00:00 Normal
23:59:59 to 23:59:60 Leap second
i.e. 61s in a minuteWiki

UTC & Astronomical
UTC – includes Leap second
Astronomical – Doesn’t, to keep looking at
the stars and design telescopes around it
Google has addressed this using a
technique known as leap smear: adds a
small amount of time through out the day
so that it is not visible to others.
Smithsonian

All mission,
Abort Abort Abort !
Tim Dodd

Do it and
you’ll end up burning your PRD !
Sarah Loreth

Trying to internationalize
manually can be suicidal !
LittleMissNunon

because, its big !

because,
it requires a lot of knowledge !
BrandonTimmo

because,
You have
to get it right !

Solution!
Don’t treat internationalization as just
another problem, it’s madness
1. Take the codes made available OSS
2. There are the libraries used by
1. Apple
2. Amazon
3. Google etc..
3. Microsoft provides proprietary Library
Kleine Moewe

Open Source
International Components for Unicode
http://site.icu-project.org/
1. C/C++, Java library
2. Text layout for Arabic, Hebrew, Indic, and
Thai
3. Multi-calender and time zones
4. Formatting, parsing of dates, times,
numbers, currencies, and messages

Open Source
International Components for Unicode
How popular is this library?
1. Adobe, Amazon (Kindle), Apache,
Appian, Apple, Avaya, BAE Systems
Geospatial eXploitation Products, BEA,
BluePhoenix Solutions, BMC Software,
Boost, BroadJump, Business Objects,
caris, CERN, Debian Linux, Dell, Eclipse

Open Source
International Components for Unicode
How popular is this library?
1. eBay, EMC Corporation, ESRI, Firebird
RDBMS, Free BSD, Gentoo Linux, Google,
GroundWork Open Source, GTK+,
Harman/Becker Automotive Systems
GmbH, HP, Hyperion, IBM, Inktomi,
Innodata Isogen, Informatica, Intel,

Open Source
International Components for Unicode
How popular is this library?
1. Interlogics, IONA, IXOS, Jikes, Library of
Congress, Mathworks, Mozilla, Netezza,
OpenOffice, Lawson Software, Leica
Geosystems GIS & Mapping LLC,
Mandrake Linux, OCLC, Progress
Software, Python, QNX, Rogue Wave

Open Source
International Components for Unicode
How popular is this library?
1. SAP, SIL, SPSS, Software AG, Sun
Microsystems (Solaris, Java), SuSE, Sybase,
Symantec, Teradata (NCR), ToolAware,
Trend Micro, Virage, webMethods, Wine,
WMS Gaming, XyEnterprise, Yahoo!, Vuo,
and many others….

EyeSplash
RESPECT! OSS
They have almost fixed this for us!
1. We do not have to write it from scratch
2. Unknowingly we are using it
3. There is a huge active community
pushing the limits

EyeSplash
Terminologies
Some alphanumeric representations!
1. i18n – Internationalization
2. g11n – Globalization
3. L10n - Localization
4. L12y - Localizability
Slash

Mozilla
i18n
Internationalization / Globalization(g11n)
Designing and developing a software
product to function in multiple locales.
This process involves
1. Identifying the locales to support,
2. Designing features for those locales
3. Writing code that functions equally well
in any of the supported locales.

L10n
Localization
Modifying or adapting a software product to
fit the requirements of a particular locale.
This process includes
1. Translating the user interface
2. Documentation and packaging,
3. Changing dialog box geometries,
4. Testing the translated products
Mozilla

L12y
Localizability
The degree to which a software product can
be localized.
1. Localizable products separate data from
code,
2. Correctly display the target language
3. Function properly after being localized.
Mozilla

SMC
Swathanthra Malayalam Computing!
1. A huge community in Kerala for
Malayalam
2. l10n
3. Pushing to upstream project like
1. Mozilla
2. Linux etc..

This work by Jerric Lyns John is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.