Software Engineering Stack Exchange
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Questions tagged [internationalization]

Internationalization (i18n) is the process of designing a software application so that it can be adapted to various languages and regions without engineering changes.

Internationalization (i18n) is the process of designing a software application so that it can be adapted to various languages and regions without engineering changes.

It is related but distinct of localization (L10n).

Internationalization and localization is a two-part process of product translation and cultural adaptation (for specific countries, regions or groups) to account for differences in distinct markets.

References

107 questions
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Effective Strategies for Localization in .NET

I am developing the UI for a .NET MVC application that will require international localization of all content in the near future. I am very familiar with .NET in general but have never had a project that required such a significant focus on…
smartcaveman
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What's the use case for formatting monetary values with a *system-dependent* currency symbol?

Many high-level programming languages have built-in features to format a number with a system-dependent currency symbol: -- Outputs $100.00 (en-US) or € 100,00 (de-AT) Console.WriteLine(100.ToString("C")); // C# ? FormatCurrency(100) …
Heinzi
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How to properly localize numbers?

Which caveats should I be aware while localizing numbers in my front-end application ? Example: In Brazilian Portuguese (pt-BR) we split thousands with dots and decimals with commas. In US English (en-US) that's the contrary. In pt-BR we present the…
Machado
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isn't number localization just unnecessary?

I've just read this page http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2010/06/10/jquery-globalization-plugin-from-microsoft.aspx One of the things they did was to convert the arabic date to the arabic calendar. I'm wondering if it is a good idea at all to…
Pacerier
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What Special characters should one allow for a Phone Number?

So I am designing a webpage which will be used for global users, includes users from Canada, US, India, UK etc. I need to apply validations for this phone number field, but I'm not sure the best way to go about this. Some of the valid formats I can…
Ranger
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Why are string resources generally kept external to the code and not inside the code?

Generally, on many platforms, I'm writing my string resources to a .resx or .xml file, and then I'm getting them using some platform-dependent approach. That is, on iOS, I'm getting them via NSBundle.MainBundle, and by using Context.Resources on…
Léon Pelletier
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How to organize localization string resources?

We're developing a large application, consisting of many small packages. Each package has its own set of resource files for localization. What's the best approach to organizing and naming the localization strings? Here are my thoughts so…
Daniel Wolf
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Accessing i18n objects from different scopes

I have been building a personal framework of mine which started off as a way to learn the MVC pattern and has progressed now into something that I like more than most frameworks out there (which is probably because I add what I like and change what…
php_nub_qq
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Colons in internationalized UI

When using gettext or a similar framework, should the translation strings include ':' (like "Label:") for generating labels for UI or should I add ':' in UI code itself?
porton
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What are the absolute, minimal requirement for containing SE Asian charsets for an embedded system project?

I work for a company that has begun integrating embedded computer systems into our products that we manufacture. We have a pretty wide range of products and they are distributed across the globe. Additionally, we've designed a few integrated…
RLH
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Do you develop with localization in mind?

When working on a software project or a website, do you develop with localization in mind? By this I mean e.g. Externalizing all strings, including error messages. Not using images that contain text. Designing your UI with text expansion in…
Jimmy Collins
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Best approach for multilingual Java Enum

I'm running into issues with an approach I am taking and am now wondering if I just started down the wrong path and should rethink my approach. Here is what I attempting. I would like to use an Enum to represent different possible Account Statuses…
forevernewb123
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Best practices for internationalization: composed sentences?

I am working on a project where clients are able to create objects in a database. Each of these objects has a description string that describes the object. Let's assume we are looking at an object that represents a car: A red car manufactured by…
wsg
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Should APIs be in en_US or en_GB or both?

Should I write APIs in US spelling or British spelling? Or should I provide with mapping both of them to a single one and internally using anyone which I like so that both of them works ? At present most of the APIs are with US spelling. What is the…
user4626
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How do you mix left-to-right and right-to-left scripts without your files looking crazy?

Say your native language is Hebrew, and you're working in a programming language like Python 3, which lets you put Hebrew in source code. Good for you! You've got a dict: d = {'a': 1} and you want to replace that a with some Hebrew. So you replace…
user2357112
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