Is your app used by customers around the world? Are you keen to provide a delightful customer experience to all your customers? Internationalization is an essential part of software development that unlocks global potential and ensures your customers have a great experience regardless of their location. Join Melanie Heighway, Senior Product Localization Manager at Atlassian, and take a deep dive into the world of internationalization and learn how internationalization can be incorporated into your development process to ultimately delight all your customers globally.

1. MELANIE HEIGHWAY | SENIOR PRODUCT LOCALIZATION MANAGER | ATLASSIAN
Expand Your App's Global Potential
With Internationalization

2. Agenda
Introduction
Kick-starting internationalization
Assumptions about language
Case Study: How does Atlassian
internationalize?
Incorporating internationalization into
your development process

3. ABOUT ME
Manage product localization in Atlassian’s Sydney office
Language and language technology background
Most interesting projects in my career
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4. Getting to know my
Audience

5. What does our
international
opportunity look like?

6. 84%of the world’s total knowledge workers
and GDP are in countries that speak
12Primary languages

7. Why internationalize?
Improve international
customer experience
and satisfaction
Widen the net for
opportunities to land
new customers
Optimise your purchase
conversion rate

8. Our mission is to unleash
the potential of every
team.
OUR MISSION

9. Language Support

10. Kick-starting internationalization

11. Internationalization is the design and
development of a product, application or
document content that enables easy
localization for target audiences that
vary in culture, region, or language.
- W3C

12. Definitions
Globalization
Globalization
Globalization (g11n) refers to the process that covers all touchpoints
associated with launching a product globally and include localization,
internationalization and product design.
Internationalization
Localization
Translation

13. Definitions
Internationalization
Globalization
Internationalization
Internationalization (i18n) is the process of making software portable
between languages or regions.
Localization
Translation

14. Definitions
Localization
Globalization
Globalization (g11n) refers to the process that covers all touchpoints
associated with launching a product globally and include localization,
internationalization and product design.
Internationalization
Localization
Localization (l10n) is the process of adapting software for specific region in
terms of language, culture , customs and the characteristics of the
target locale.
Translation

15. Definitions
Translation
Globalization
Globalization (g11n) refers to the process that covers all touchpoints
associated with launching a product globally and include localization,
internationalization and product design.
Internationalization
Localization
Translation
Translation is the process of changing an original (source) language text
into a target language, using appropriate grammar and vocabulary to
convey the meaning of the source text.

16. A specific international
market where a target user
is working. Encompasses
localization conventions,
culture and language
preferences for formatting
of numbers and currency
provision
LANGUAGE LOCALE
Speech of group: the
speech of a country, region,
or group of people,
including its diction, syntax
and grammar
Source: Internationalisation and Globalisation Visual Basic 6 – Alan Dean

17. Internationalization Touchpoints
Product and
Engineering
Product user
interface
internationalization
Design
Designing with
internationalization
in mind
Content
Tone, style and copy
for non-English
speaking customers
Marketing
Promoting language
support and
optimizing search
keywords

18. Software
Internationalization
Tips
Extract your strings

19. Software
Internationalization
Tips
Implement encoding such as UTF-8

21. Software
Internationalization
Tips
Assign appropriate unique keys

22. EXAMPLE 1
Please remember
You don’t always need the line or text at all.
Order is a verb. This is the
primary call to action
button on the shopping
cart page.
Key: purchase.primary.cta
Value: Order

23. EXAMPLE 2
Please remember
You don’t always need the line or text at all.
Order is a noun. This is a
section title for a page
displayed after purchase
giving the order
summary.
Key:
purchase.complete.heading
Value: Order

24. Software
Internationalization
Tips
Provide string developer notes

25. EXAMPLE

26. Software
Internationalization
Tips
Avoid hard-coded strings

27. EXAMPLE
Hard-coded strings
are very jarring in a
localized UI

28. Software
Internationalization
Tips
Avoid string concatenation

29. 8.500,50 $
12.5
Currency formatting is not universal …
Neither is date and time formatting!

30. OTHER CONSIDERATIONS
Plurals
Different languages have
different pluralization rules

31. OTHER CONSIDERATIONS
Gender
Translations will be dependent
on the gender of the subject in
many languages

32. Context
Statement shown to a user when their
invoice or quote has been paid for. The
variable {{document}} could be replaced
with the word invoice or quote.
Resulting strings
EXAMPLE

33. OTHER CONSIDERATIONS
CAPITALS
Full capitalization is not
appropriate in all languages

34. DESIGN WITH INTERNATIONALIZATION IN MIND
Text expansion
One of the most common
internationalization barriers is not
having enough space for translations.
Graphics
Don’t embed text in images. Like
hard-coded strings, you won’t be able
to localize these.
UI Elements
Avoid having text in narrow boxes,
tables or columns
Text will expand when localized
… up to 2x times or more
Narrow Spaces
Try to avoid creating sentences with
UI elements embedded

35. UI Design Resulting strings
EXAMPLE

36. Image Source: International Institute for Analytics
Content is KING
Ensure copy is final and free of typos
and grammar errors
Use active rather than passive phrasing
Use consistent terminology and
wording
Decide on your tone before launching
localization
Try to avoid abbreviations

37. Translation
Team
Localization Ready

38. Translation
Team
Translation
Management
System (TMS)
Localization Ready

39. Translation
Team
Translation
Management
System (TMS)
Repository
Connection
Localization Ready

40. Translation
Team
Translation
Management
System (TMS)
Repository
Connection
Quality
assurance
and release
Localization Ready

42. Assumptions about language

43. Culturally biased assumptions about language
Word casing
All scripts contain upper and lower
case letters
Alphabet and sorting
Languages using Latin script run
from A to Z and are sorted the same
way. Ö !!
Punctuation
Punctuation (including inverted
commas, colons and percentage
signs) is the same in all languages
Words are separated by individual
spaces
Gregorian Calendar
All countries follow the Gregorian
calendar
1 country = 1 language
You only need to support one
language per country
Spacing

44. DON’T WORRY.
ALL ENGINEERS SPEAK ENGLISH.
🤔 REALLY…?

45. I’m used to saying Sprint
and Backlog in English
VALUED SPANISH CUSTOMER

46. TARGET AUDIENCE LANGUAGE EXPECTATIONS
• Product Buyers
• Product Administrators
• Product Users

47. Case Study: How does Atlassian
internationalize?

48. Supports 15+
languages
Shared
language
vendors, assets
and technology
International
Team
Internationalization at Atlassian
Covers a range of
content and
products

49. Design Internationalization
Including UI elements in our designs which
restricts space and word sentence order

50. Tone and style
”Practical with a wink” is actually quite hard in
other languages.

51. Lack of context
Product UI strings are short. Without developer
notes for context, we’ve seen a few
mistranslations along the way

52. Incorporating internationalization into
your development process

53. Internationalization Touchpoints
Product and
Engineering
Product user
interface
internationalization
Design
Designing with
internationalization
in mind
Content
Tone, style and copy
for non-English
speaking customers
Marketing
Promoting language
support and
optimizing search
keywords

54. Internationalization Process

55. Key Takeaways
Global potential
Internationalization
unleashes growth
opportunities and allows
you to take international
customer experience to the
next level
I18n principles
In order for your product
to be ready to go global,
you will need to make
your software strings
suitable for localization
It takes a village
Successful internationalization
isn’t just about software i18n,
other content and factors such
as design and copy creation
must be considered