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Localize Your Software & Increase Your Revenue. When you localize your applications and make them available in new languages, you open new markets and new revenue streams, which lets you increase profits by making it easy to offer your software in multiple languages.
The modern global economy is driving change in the software industry. These changes require software companies to translate and localize products or risk revenue loss and being locked out of international markets. They demand that large international enterprises globalize internally, develops business applications to improve ease of use and adoption rates.
Each locale has its own specific languages, cultural, social conventions, legal standards and preferences that must be met in order to achieve acceptance. Localization includes translating text, adapting graphics and changing the data and functionality of a software user’s interface.
A software product that has been localized properly has the look and feel of a source product.
The localization process will have the following steps:
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Assessment of the material received and evaluation of the tools and resources required for localization |
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Cultural, linguistic and technical assessment |
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Linguistic and functional quality assurance |
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Localization of graphics and scripts |
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Re-work on user interface, including resizing of forms and dialogs |
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Translation of software strings to the target language |
Translation India’s software localization team takes care of each and every aspect involved in such a way that the localized content serves its objective. Special support for certain languages such as East Asian languages is also provided.
Developers can reduce their development time on almost any international application by considering the following issues prior to the start of the development cycle:
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Use Unicode as your character encoding to represent text. If you cannot use Unicode, you will need to implement DBCS enabling, bi-directional (BiDi) enabling, code page switching, text tagging, and so on. |
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Consider implementing a multilingual user interface. If you design the user interface to open in the default UI language and offer the option to change to other languages, users of the same machine who speak different languages reduce down time related to software configuration. |
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Watch for Windows messages that indicate changes in the input language, and use that information for spell checking, font selection, and so on. |
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If you are developing for Windows 2000, test your application on all language variants of Windows 2000, using all possible cultures/locales. Windows 2000 supports the languages used in more than 120 cultures/locales. |
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Avoid slang expressions, colloquialisms, and obscure phrasing in all text. At best, they are difficult to translate; at worst, they are offensive. |
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Avoid images in bitmaps and icons that are ethnocentric or offensive in other cultures/locales. |
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Avoid maps that include controversial regional or national boundaries. They are a notorious source of political offense. |
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