Countless web pages are nowadays available in diverse languages. Due to businesses increasingly expanding into various countries, the proportion of such global multi-lingual web applications has grown significantly.
Website testing tasks that involve multiple languages pose their fair share of difficulties in today’s world.
Recommended IPTV Service Providers
- IPTVGREAT – Rating 4.8/5 ( 600+ Reviews )
- IPTVRESALE – Rating 5/5 ( 200+ Reviews )
- IPTVGANG – Rating 4.7/5 ( 1200+ Reviews )
- IPTVUNLOCK – Rating 5/5 ( 65 Reviews )
- IPTVFOLLOW -Rating 5/5 ( 48 Reviews )
- IPTVTOPS – Rating 5/5 ( 43 Reviews )
In this tutorial, we will provide seven fundamental strategies to help you evaluate multi-lingual, browser-based applications effectively.
What You Will Learn:
- Strategies To Test Multi-Lingual Browser-Based Applications
- Strategy #1: Set Up and Utilize the Required Test Environment
- Strategy #2: Obtain Accurate Translations
- Strategy #3: Familiarize Yourself Thoroughly With the Application
- Strategy #4: Begin by Examining the Labels
- Strategy #5: Proceed to Other Controls
- Strategy #6: Ensure to Analyze the Data
- Strategy #7: Understand Cultural Differences
- Conclusion
Strategies To Test Multi-Lingual Browser-Based Applications
Strategy #1: Set Up and Utilize the Required Test Environment
If a website supports both English and Japanese, it is not sufficient to merely adjust the default browser language and perform identical tests in both languages.
The correct language for your website’s interface may be determined by the browser’s language setting, the computer’s regional and language settings, a configuration in the web application, and other factors, depending on how the website is built.
As such, for an effective functional test, you need to test the site on two different machines, one with English as the operating system language, and the other with Japanese. It is advisable to retain the default settings on both devices, as many users seldom alter these settings on their own systems.
Strategy #2: Obtain Accurate Translations
Translations that are true to both the meaning and context are best obtained from a native speaker from the same region as the intended users.
If a native speaker is unavailable for assistance, you may have to resort to automated online translations from sites like Wordreference.com and Dictionary.com.
It is always wise to verify automated translations by comparing them across various sources before using them for testing.
Strategy #3: Familiarize Yourself Thoroughly With the Application
Considering you may not know all the languages the site supports, it’s a good practice to become well acquainted with the website’s features. The more you test the English version, the easier it will be to navigate the site’s versions in other languages.
Without such familiarity, you may need to keep the English version open in a separate browser to guide you through the other language’s version, which could significantly slow down your work.
Strategy #4: Begin by Examining the Labels
As a starting point, scrutinize all the labels on the other language versions of the site—these tend to be more static items on the site.
Labels in English are generally short, while translated labels tend to expand, which can cause issues related to label truncation, overlapping with other controls, improper text wrapping, and more.
Comparing the labels with their translations is key to identifying these issues.
Strategy #5: Proceed to Other Controls
After examining the labels, you can then proceed to verify other controls for accurate translations and user interface issues. Effective tests include ensuring the site provides accurate error messages in different languages, which involves generating all possible error messages.
Usually, for untranslated text, three scenarios might present themselves: the text may be missing, be retained in English, or it could appear as a sequence of rarely used symbols.
Strategy #6: Ensure to Analyze the Data
Multi-lingual websites typically store data in the UTF-8 Unicode encoding format. You can check your site’s character encoding going to View -> Character Encoding in Mozilla or View -> Encoding if you’re using IE. This format can effortlessly represent data in different languages.
Don’t forget to inspect the input data. Inputting data in another language should be feasible on the site, and the displayed data should be accurate. Additionally, compare output data with its broader translation.
Strategy #7: Understand Cultural Differences
One challenge in testing multi-lingual sites involves accommodating the specific cultural context of each language.
Cultural issues can encompass preferred (or avoided) colors, text orientation (which could be left-to-right, right-to-left, or top-to-bottom), the format of greetings and addresses, measurements, currency, and more in various cultures.
Apart from providing accurate translations, the site’s user interface should also correctly reflect other culturally bound elements. For example, text direction, currency symbols, date format, etc., should all be accurate and appropriate.
Conclusion
As you may infer from the strategies enumerated above, a suitable testing environment and accurate translations are crucial for successfully testing site versions in different languages.
About the Author: This article is guest-authored by Inder P Singh.
We welcome you to share your own experiences and insights on testing multi-lingual websites in the comment section below.