Understanding the Essentials of Localization and Internationalization Testing:
Websites in multiple languages are not uncommon, affirming the global trend for businesses to connect and add value to local markets by presenting their products and services in the language of the customer.
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The procedure of modifying a product for a different language, region, or locale is called localization. It assists in discovering fresh business prospects and aids in growth and development.
Regrettably, there is a tendency for many organizations to deal with localization only at the end of the development or right before the product’s debut.
To successfully carry out localization of a product, it’s crucial to ascertain whether it has been internationalized.
Are you somewhat perplexed? Internationalization, or i18n, refers to the process of designing and developing a product or application that can support multiple languages and locales. It includes managing non-western characters, double-byte languages, expanding or contracting text as required, displaying Unicode characters, and using a Unicode-compatible database, among other elements.
In this piece, we’ll delve deeper into both localization testing and internationalization testing.
Key Takeaways From This Guide:
What Exactly is Localization Testing?
Localization, abbreviated as l10n, is the process of tweaking a product, application, or document content to match the unique cultural, linguistic, and other requirements for a specific region or locale.
While many people associate localization with translating user interfaces and documentation, it’s much more encompassing.
Essential areas to be tailored when localizing an application include:
- Formats of date and time (including number formats)
- The currency utilized
- Keyboard operation
- Data sorting, alignment, and collation
- Color palettes, symbols, and icons
- Text and visuals that may be deemed sensitive or potentially misunderstood in a particular culture
- Diverse legal requirements compliance
The primary goal of localization is to make the product seem as though it was specifically created for the intended market.
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Localization goes beyond simple content translation, requiring extensive technical, visual, and linguistic evaluations to identify cultural nuances that aren’t immediately apparent.
For instance, it includes identifying and solving issues relating to grammar and context, ensuring correct usage of linguistic terms and sizes, and seeing to it that payment platforms are recognizable and functional.
Localization and internationalization together are frequently referred to as globalization. Globalization is a more expansive concept, including both internationalization and localization. Internationalization makes the application capable of supporting multiple languages and locales, while localization adapts the application to a specific locale and language.
The following diagram exhibits how localization and internationalization collectively create a globalized software application.
What does Internationalization imply?
Internationalization, or i18n, refers to the process of designing and developing a product, application, or document content in a manner that allows it to be effortlessly tailored to any culture, region, or language.
The term i18n is used since there are 18 characters between the “i” and the “n” in internationalization.
Typically, Internationalization involves:
- Simplifying the localization and internationalization process by designing and developing the application in a certain manner. This involves ensuring proper character rendering in various languages, managing string concatenation, and using Unicode during development.
- While developing the application to support bidirectional text, it’s crucial to consider the bigger picture and identify languages that may necessitate additional markup in the Document Type Definition (DTD). CSS may be used as well to support vertical text or other non-Latin typographic features.
- Making sure that the code can accommodate local and regional languages and cultural preferences. This involves leveraging predefined localization information and features from existing libraries, such as date and time formats, local calendar holidays, numeric formats, presentation of data, sorting, data alignment, and displaying names and addresses based on regional traditions.
- Separating localizable components from the source code to make the code independent, thereby allowing localized content to be loaded based on the user’s preferences.
Internationalization mainly focuses on designing and developing an application in a way that preps it for localization. It does not necessarily involve the actual translation of language, cultural, or region-specific content. The aim is to have the application ready for transition if localization becomes a necessity.
The following diagram depicts the difference between internationalization and localization.
(Click the image to view in full size)
[source of image]
Presented below is a table accentuating the discrepancies between localization testing and internationalization testing:
Localization Testing | Internationalization Testing |
---|---|
1. Modifying a product, application, or document content to meet cultural, linguistic, and other specific requirements of a region or locale | 1. Designing and developing a product, application, or document content to enable easy localization |
2. Often abbreviated to l10n | 2. Commonly abbreviated to i18n |
3. Primarily focuses on online help, GUI context, dialog boxes, error notifications, tutorials, manuals, release notes, installation guides, etc. | 3. Concentrates on compatibility testing, functionality testing, interoperability testing, usability testing, installation testing, and user interface validation testing |
4. Incorporates translation to a specific local language | 4. Application code is independent of the language |
5. Not confined to the user interface level | 5. Involves designing at the core level |
The Scope of Testing
Localization and internationalization testing cover several components that necessitate thorough inspection. Key points of emphasis include:
1) Language
- Support for Unicode text character encoding
- Numerical systems
- Writing directions
- Variations in spelling
- Rules for capitalization and sorting
- Keyboard shortcuts and layouts
2) Culture and Region
- Names and titles
- Government numbers (such as Social Security numbers) and passports
- Colors and images
- Formats for telephone numbers, postal codes, and addresses
- Paper sizes
- Weights and measures
- Symbols for currency and their placements
3) Dates and Important Events
- Formats for date and time
- Type of calendar (for instance, Gregorian, Lunar)
- Formats for numbers (decimal separators, grouping of digits)
Best Practices for Testing Internationalization
When it comes to internationalization testing, it’s critical to focus on various aspects impacted by internationalization. To guarantee comprehensive testing, consider the following key areas:
#1) Localizing Content
Localized content comprises text and graphics. It requires testing static and dynamic content that gets displayed in the interface. Static content elements include tabs, buttons, labels, and names of web elements, welcome messages, help text, tooltips, and so on.
Dynamic content refers to messages that appear when forms are submitted, validation messages for errors or missing mandatory fields, and other user-specific messages. This type of language testing is usually conducted by language experts or by checking the translations against language-specific properties files offered by the client.
#2) Feature-based Testing
Features can vary according to the region. It’s vital to ensure that features relevant to a specific region are accessible and functional, while those irrelevant to a region are correspondingly hidden.
#3) Awareness of Locale/Culture
Understanding locale/culture involves recognizing variances in date and number formatting used in different regions. This includes calendars, holidays, formatting of date and time, currencies, number formats, addresses, telephone numbers, zip codes, units of measurement, etc.
Data conversion among different encoding formats is also crucial when working with different locales. A profound understanding of encoding formats and their conversion is necessary to prevent data loss.
#4) User Interface
The user interface should be tested to ensure that it can adjust to different languages. It should appropriately accommodate text of varying lengths without distorting the layout. For instance, the interface should be flexible enough to accommodate the extra space that German text requires compared to English.
In addition to adapting text, the user interface needs a thorough review for defects like truncated strings, overlapping or misaligned controls, duplicate hotkeys, and missing translations. All interface elements, including menus, alerts, dialog boxes, images, toolbars, and status bars, should be translated into the respective language.
#5) Rendering
Rendering testing involves making sure that all supported scripts are displayed correctly according to the language-specific characters linked with them. Scripts should be correctly executed without any errors, and all characters should be correctly exhibited in the stipulated language.
Character rendering entails considerations like bidirectionality, context-dependent shaping, reordering, combining characters, breaks for words and lines, justification, left/right alignment, and so on.
#6) Transferring Files
If the application includes operations involving file transfer, it’s important to test whether the file transfer interface is localized according to the chosen language. Moreover, the successful and unaltered transfer of files needs to be verified.
When dealing with text files comprising Unicode characters, specifying the right encoding format is essential for proper reading. Failure to do so can result in incomprehensible text.
#7) Database
Testing the database for internationalized applications involves ensuring support for Unicode characters. Special data types, like nchar, nvarchar, and ntext, are available to store Unicode characters. These data types, known as national Unicode data types, work similarly to regular char, varchar, and text data types but with some additional traits:
- They require more disk space
- They support more characters
- The maximum size for nchar and nvarchar is 4000, while for char and varchar it’s 8000
Working with these national Unicode data types is the same as dealing with regular data types. Special care should be taken during database migration to ensure accurate data type mapping, as incorrect mapping may lead to data loss.
The Advantages of Internationalization Testing
Internationalization testing offers several benefits, including:
- Enhanced international exposure for the product
- Improved product quality, particularly when designed with internationalization in mind
- Access to a broader global audience
- Lower expenditure for launching a product globally
Can the Process Be Automated?
Testing an internationalized application can be quite a challenging task for any organization. Each language that the application supports can significantly increase the number of test cases required. For organizations that depend heavily on automation, the question emerges: Is automation feasible for a product with such a wide scope and diverse language support?
Building and maintaining test scripts that can easily extend to support multiple languages, is one solution.
If an application is created using internationalization and localization best practices, such as establishing a language-independent core version that refers to language-specific properties files at runtime, automation scripts can be written and performed for the base version, hence covering all supported languages.
Before implementing automation, it’s crucial to ensure that names or IDs assigned to elements in the application’s windows remain the same despite changes in language. Each web element, like text fields, radio buttons, dropdown menus, checkboxes, hyperlinks, and pop-ups, should bear unique IDs or names that are independent of language.
Once it’s confirmed that all web elements are language-agnostic, highly efficient automation scripts can be created for the internationalized application.
This link offers a comprehensive explanation of how to automate testing for an internationalized application using Selenium WebDriver, a popular open-source tool.
Localization testing tools:
Localization testing can be difficult to carry out using only automation tools. Nevertheless, certain tools excellently automate specific tasks. Here is a list of some of these valuable tools:
- Localization of the UI can be automated using IBM Rational Functional Tester
- eggPlant
- .NET application localization tool http://www.redpin.eu
- Applitools
Test Cases
For an exhaustive list of test cases applicable to localization and internationalization testing, feel free to consult this link.
Concluding Remarks
Localization and internationalization testing are challenging activities that demand a profound grasp of core development concepts. Through following best practices like designing for internationalization and maintaining language-independent test scripts, organizations can effectively test internationalized applications.
Localization and internationalization testing offer unprecedented opportunities for businesses to expand their influence and cater to international audiences. It’s essential to