technical localisation
Localisation is the process of adapting a product or service to a particular language and culture. The resultant “look-and-feel” of the product or service then better facilitates its use and sale in country.
itt provide a complete localisation service delivering your content ready for overseas markets and customers.
In localising a product, in addition to language translation, such details as time zones, money, national holidays, local colour sensitivities, product or service names, gender roles, and geographic examples must all be considered. A successfully localised service or product is one that appears to have been developed within the local culture and thus appear indigenous.
Often localisation involves adaptation of software for use by individuals of different language or geographic region. This localisation process may include such modifications as translating user-interface text, translating help files and documentation, changing icons, modifying the visual design of dialog boxes, etc. Sometimes abbreviated as “L10N”.
Ideally, a product or service is developed so that localisation is relatively easy to achieve - for example, by creating technical illustrations for manuals in which the text can easily be changed to another language and allowing some expansion room for this purpose. This enabling process can be termed as internationalisation.
Enablement can include:
- Allowing space in user interfaces (for example, hardware labels, help pages, and online menus) for translation into languages that require more characters
- Developing products (such as Web editors or authoring tools) that can support international character sets (Unicode)
- Creating print or Web site graphic images so that their text labels can be translated inexpensively
- Using written examples that have global meaning
- For software, ensuring data space so that messages can be translated from languages with single-byte character codes
