For lively discussion and valuable information about localization, join the Localization Professional Linkedin group, http://www.linkedin.com/groups?home=&gid=44105&trk=anet_ug_hm
Today’s discussion yields extensive information about the meaning of color in various cultures, to build on the chart in “Color Meanings by Culture” posted at http://www.globalization-group.com/edge/resources/color-meanings-by-culture/
For guidelines on using English effectively worlwide, consult Kohl’s Global English Style Guide, which has been reviewed.
The AeroSpace and Defence Industries Association of Europe publishes “ASD Simplified Technical English,” Specification ASD-STE100, European Community Trade Mark No. 004901195, International specification for the preparation of maintenance documentation in a controlled language. A consulting firm has assembled resources on this standard and offers training in many locations.
This is a thesis for a Masters student, Kang Sun, from Bowling Green. The abstract reads, in part: “This thesis identifies Chinese university situations specific to the transfer of technical communication to China, especially the relationship between general socio-economic settings in China and the influences these general settings have on the university disciplinary structure changes. The objective of this research is to reveal openings in translation discipline as a shell for technical communciation to merge with. [clip]. It is concluded that the merger of technical communication with translation can both gain technical communication a pivotal status of being a discipline in Chinese universities and solve some problems of the translation field. More importantly, such a merger offers a future-oriented perspective of development for the merged discipline to ride more successfully the stablly growing Chinese economic growth.
Full text via PDF: http://etd.ohiolink.edu/send-pdf.cgi/SUN%20KANG.pdf?bgsu1122304773
The Handbook of Global User Research is described on the User Centric website at http://www.usercentric.com/handbook-global-user-research. You can view the table of contents at http://www.globaluserresearch.com/book/table-of-contents.
When you are creating a form, it’s necessary to consider users in countries other than your own. The UXmatters blog has a post about setting up address fields to accomodate international differences.
The Nielsen Norman group offers “E-commerce User Experience: Design Guidelines for International Users” (pdf, 2007). You can read about and download these guidelines. There is a charge for the download.
For a thorough explanation of the essentials of Unicode and encoding, visit “The Absolute Minimum Every Software Developer Absolutely, Positively Must Know About Unicode and Character Sets (No Excuses!).” This is on the site of a programmer who engages visitors in translating articles. Available translations are listed on the sidebar of the home page.
If you spend a few minutes on delicious.com, you can be rewarded with insights about resources in internationalization and localization, as well as who is active in the community. Explore one user’s links on web localization and then explore some other related searches to discover this world for yourself.
If your organization does business in more than one part of the world, your web team faces the challenge of internationalization and localization of the website.
Internationalization refers to making a product ready for use throughout the world, and localization refers to making a product ready for use in a particular geographic area. For a website, internationalization requires making the code work worldwide, especially to support presenting the site in multiple languages, and developing a design and content for audiences with different cultural expectations.
Several articles are available to help meet these challenges. Four are presented here.
Several basic tips for internationalizing code are presented in Implementing Websites For Internationalization.
If you are providing a website in multiple languages, it’s desirable to avoid creating and maintaining multiple versions of the site. Internationalize JSP-based Websites presents one method.
A design blog addresses the challenge of providing a way for users to change to their preferred language. The author notes there is no standard interface for this. For details, visit Design Examples of Website Internationalization and Localization.
Creating content for readers worldwide is the focus of 7 Easy Tips to Internationalize Your Website. This is part of a larger guide with many resources, Culture Customized Content.
“Human Work Interaction Design: Usability in Social Cultural Contexts” edited by Dinesh Katre, Rikke Orngreen, Pradeep Yammiyawar, and Torkil Clemmensen has been listed on Amazon as due for release in March 2010. The book is published by Springer Verlag in the series of IFIP Advances in Information and Communication Technology (AICT).
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