Internationalization of software

The internationalization of a software consists in preparing it with the regionalization (localization) , i.e. with the adaptation to different languages and cultures. Contrary to the regionalization, which requires especially competences in languages, internationalization is a primarily technical work, undertaken by programmers.

For example, a program C thus written:

printf (" Fatal error: %s \ n" , msg);

is not internationalized. To translate the message, it will be necessary to publish it source.

On the contrary,

printf (gettext (" Fatal error: %s \ n"), msg);

is internationalized (thanks to the library Gettext): the program will seek in its files of regionalization (localization) a character string corresponding to “Fatal error: %s', and this for the language of the user.

Gettext uses as key, as index in the files of localization, the version by defect of the message. Other environments of programming can use, for example, a number (what Mac OS did).

Internationalization does not require only one work on the messages. It is also often necessary to make it possible to change the colors (of which the significance can change according to the cultures), the graphs, the format of the dates or the numbers, the direction of the writing (from right to left in Arab), the size of the graphic elements (a German text in is longer than in English, etc).

It can be judicious to conceive a program to function with a form of Unicode in particular UTF-8/UTF-16, in order to return it more easily internationalisable. One often shortens internationalization in i18n because, in English, there are eighteen letters in the word, between I and N. In the same way for localization with l10n .

See too

External bonds

the library gettext, very much used for the internationalization of the free software
Internationalization of Python, for the language Python
Introduction to i18n
Codito (Delphi projects)
Lingobit Localizer Internationalization of .NET, MFC, Java
Multilizer (Delphi projects)
Sisulizer Internationalization of Delphi, C++, .NET, Java, C#, VB.NET
Tutoriel Internationalization in Java
Internationalization Example in Delphi

Zh-min-nan: Kok-chè-hòa kap chāi-tē-hòa

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