white papers in globalization

8/14/2019 White Papers in Globalization

1/16

http://www.lisa.org

Bringing Globalization to Every Solution

LISA

White Papersin Globalization


2/16

2003 The Localization Industry Standards Association. All rights reserved.

LISA White Papers in Globalization: Bringing Globalization to Every Solution was written by Xiao Hui Zhu

(IBM China). Te author wishes to thank Michael Anobile (LISA) or his advice and support, and ArleLommel (LISA/SMP) or editorial contributions.

Xiao Hui Zhu ( ) is an advisory sofware engineer at IBM Globalization Certification Lab in China.She has worked or IBM since November , starting her career as a project manager in the Globalizationorganization and perorming various roles, including tester, architect, coordinator, and consultant. She maybe reached at [email protected].


3/16


LISA

White Papers

in Globalization

Bringing Globalization to Every Solution

Xiao Hui Zhu ( )

Advisory Software Engineer

Globalization Certification Laboratory

IBM China


4/16


4 LISA White Papers in Globalization: Bringing Globalization to Every Solution

Contents

Abstract . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

Planning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7Business Owners . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

Raising awareness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

Development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

Deployment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

Maintenance. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

Developers. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

Development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

Coding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

Translation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

Testing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

Maintenance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

Adding new languages/countries/regions:. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

Changing or adding globalization features: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

Endnotes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

Figures

Figure 1. Globalization requirements for a global travel application. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

Figure 2. High-level structure of a global application built on a Web Services system. . . 10

Figure 3. Typical translation work flow. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

Figure 4. Localization testing checks to see if naming/address/date

representations conform to the cultural conventions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

Figure 5. It is not easy to figure out translation accuracy without the context. . . . . . . . 12


5/16


LISA White Papers in Globalization: Bringing Globalization to Every Solution 5

Abstract

As the Internet increasingly drives the economy, todays market is rapidly becoming more and moregeared toward multinational participation and international transactions. One challenge in this is thatglobalization is not something that can simply be added to existing applications. Globalization perme-ates so many areas in a solutions development that it must be taken into consideration rom the very

beginning o the development cycle.

Tis Globalization, Internationalization, Localization and ranslation (GIL) industry is so wide inits scope that most people see it rom only their own narrow and deep domain(s). People working in

globalization must know how to merge globalization support into current development cycles, which mayhave been planned with no special consideration or globalization, without any risky impact on projects.

Tis paper explores the authors experience in enabling globalization support throughout the whole

development cycle. It will discuss ways to collect globalization requirements rom business owners,ways to help raise the profile o the globalization support plan or business owners, ways to embed

globalization support into the development team rom a project management perspective, and ways tohelp developers quickly understand globalization (without adding multiple diffi cult-to-learn programs).


6/16



Requirements

Te Internets ast growth has opened unprecedented opportunities or businesses beyond nationalboundaries and geographical barriers. Tose living outside o the United States and other English-speaking countries like to be served in their own languages and are sensitive to their cultural and nationalconventions. Tis need is even more important or large businesses, because they typically have broaderglobal coverage.

People throughout the world generally preer to use their native languages in their daily lives, and mostcannot speak English. When companies want to promote their products in local markets, the first thingthey need to do is develop culturally-acceptable translations or their brands, then localize everything

(brochures, websites, products manuals) accordingly.

Globalization impacts every aspect o a solution. Basics such as date/time representation, number/cur-rency representation, calendar representation, etc. are all very general considerations. By taking the mean-ings o the words into consideration, linguistic services encompass a variety o technologies, such as spell

and grammar checking, morphological analysis, speech recognition, machine translation, etc.

In addition to the above-mentioned business-independent needs, globalization also helps to generateROI by providing crucial culturally-sensitive business operations. When a business is being expanded

rom one region to another, the company must plan to adjust business operations to fit local markets.Tis brings globalization challenges to sofware applications, especially those having direct interactiveuser interaces. A large multinational bank, or example, will have different business policies in differentcountriesi its applications are not well designed with globalization in mind, as the bank expands thesame tasks must be invested in repeatedly, and time to market has to be delayed.

Te globalization requirements or a global travel application may look something like the view shown inFigure . Globalization requirements for a global travel application.

Requirements

Global traveling experience

date/time representation

number/currency representation calendar representation measure representation 12 language versions 4 machine translation versions

personalized tour

recommendations multilingual dynamic

e-business

Figure 1. Globalization requirements for a global travel application.


7/16



Planning

In developing a globalized solution, the first step is planning, both or business-owners and developers.

Business Owners

Raising awarenessIn many (i not most) situations, business owners will have only very limited knowledge about the detailso globalization, although they will know or certain that their businesses needs to be globalized. o helpthem quickly get a handle on the relevant issues, a couple o things can be presented:

. Ask them to visit several typical globalized solutions as reerences, so they know the basis o glo-balization and its behaviors and values in the solutions. A set o detailed explanations or individualglobalization eature must be prepared.

. Help them analyze the needs and potential o re-engineering to increase ROI through adding global-ization support in their own businesses.

. Settle on requirements through back-and-orth communication. A checklist or the eature sets (builton the list mentioned in step ) can be used to simpliy the process.

DevelopmentBased on the needs determined in consultation with business owners, developers can work out plans(including cost, schedule and scope) or implementation and pass them to the business owners or review.

Once all have agreed to the plan, the developers can begin development work, and the business ownersdont need to worry about the details o the development cycle, except or veriying that developers aremeeting pre-defined checkpoints.

Business owners maybe asked to help provide more inormation about business, such as typical test data

or emulating the business reality, historical data or urther analyzing load balance and perormance is-sues, and customer profile inormation or refining globalization-relevant design, etc.

DeploymentBusiness owners should pay attention on deployment. While a detailed report is usually made availableupon completion o development, the highlights must be regularly reported to the business owners orearly awareness. Globalization does not add additional efforts or deployment, but helps or a more rea-sonable deployment solution; or example, it can help to minimize peaks in server loading by distribut-

ing data rom different countries or regions on the server(s), so peaks and troughs in server loading thatdepend on times zone can be better balanced.

MaintenanceMaintenance is very important to business owners, and developers need to present a detailed proposalas one o the later deliverables in a project. It is, however, best to keep the business owners aware o somehighlights in the planning stage. Tese highlights may contain the ollowing:

. Tere must be a documented process and its corresponding implementation or updating contentsand/or programs. Ideally this is an automated mechanism, which extracts textual data rom the con-


8/16



tents o updates, distributes this text to translators, collects the translated files and builds them backinto the application, and then gets the application up and running again;

2. Tere must be a documented process and its corresponding implementation or adding languages. It

shall include how to make the application switch to a new language, how to arrange translation (seestep 1) or the new language, how to incorporate any new language-specific eatures, and how to adda new languagewithout unnecessarily affecting other languages and business operations.

. Tere must be a process documented or removing/updating/adding globalization eatures to allowor changes. Some potential changes are new currency ormats (such as the Euro), new national poli-cies (e.g., ractions are not allowable or currency), new date ormats due to government transitions,

etc.

Based on the above, business owners can plan or and accommodate change by including globalizationsupport in their plans and building it into their solutions.

DevelopersDevelopers themselves have many things to plan in addition to assisting business owners in making and

assessing plans.

Tough globalization does not bring much more efforts to development itsel, it does bring somethingdifferent to the team. Only a limited number o staff will typically ocus on globalization, but the othersneed to have some understanding o globalization, so they can co-operate with those involved in global-

ization and not inadvertently undermine their efforts.

Delivery o a single executable is the model assumed in this paper, and all staff should be amiliar with therequirements or this. Te developers who ocus on globalization in the team will take up globalization-oriented jobs, such as:

. Design and development o globalization-related modules (such as centralized tax calculation or allthe countries);

. Setup and configuration o globalization-related products (such as machine translation, terminology

management, or translation memory or all required language pairs);. Coordination o translations (globalization usually needs translation, and it usually happens late in

the project when content is relatively stable) and communication between translators (usually nativespeakers rom various countries) and the development team;

. Determination as to whether runtime systems needs any globalization-related setup and configura-tion (i thay are not the same as the development system), as well as implementation o any such

special requirements;. Detection o any potential changes due to globalization and creation o a corresponding proposal or

maintenance;

Others in the team may only need to know how to use progamming-language capabilities to solve basic

cultural-specific needs, such as time, date, number ormat, etc., that belong to language-independent pro-gram code.


9/16



Development

Globalization is not part o a eature listit is a undamental part o architecture. Globalization must beconsidered rom the first release o an application, no matter whether the business needs globalizationsupport or not at that time.

A single executableis the key to ensuring that a globalized system can be designed, built, and maintainedeffi ciently and correctly. A single executable means that one version o a programs code supports alllanguages, countries or regions. Sofware programs must be developed that allow the single executableto handle the cultural needs o all supported countries/regions. In this model a culture- and language-independent program code calls culture- and language-dependent inormation at run time, thus greatly

reducing the cost and effort invested in design and deployment and simpliying the process as well.

Building on these basic concepts, next comes the process o globalization development, starting with theollowing requirements.

RequirementsAll globalization requirements should be treated as one group. A list containing application-independentcultural-specific representations, documents or introducing globalization technologies, and globaliza-

tion-oriented business logic analysis can all help business owners understand globalization and planaccordingly.

DesignGlobalization starts rom architecture. Even businesses that do not presently need globalization shouldstill take globalization into basic consideration or uture upgrades. A single executable must be built atfirst and all the other components, no matter whether globalization-related or not, should be built on top

o it.

Some multinational companies were not aware o the need to consider globalization requirements romthe beginning many years ago when they started to design their systems. Te resulting shortcomingsappeared dramatically as these businesses subsequently expanded throughout the world. Whenbusinesses with such systems go to change their existing systems to accommodate the needs o variouslocal markets, they are ofen very disappointed the enormous investment required to correct or previousdesigns inadequate or globalization needs.

For basic globalization eatures such as date/time/number representation ormat, no special considerationsare necessary at the design stage i the programming language (such as Java) can handle them, providedthat these eatures are accessed in standard ways. Tese aspects are invisible in the blueprint, but help to

support globalization.

In other cases globalization support is visible in the blueprint. It may be in the orm o products (suchas machine translation), programming modules (such as tax calculations) or even several additional

programming commands (such as identiy the language preerences rom end-users).

For example, a global travel application built on Web Services system might have an architecture such asthat shown in Figure . High-level structure of a global application built on a Web Services system:


10/16



WSD

L

Publishi

ngservice U

DDI

Lookup

service

Dynamic Invoking

SOAP

Service Registration Center

Service Provider Service Requesters

en_US

zh_CN

ja_JP

ar_EG

de_DEen_US

zh_CN

ja_JP

ar_EG

de_DE

en_US

ja_JP

en_US

ja_JP

machine translationpersonalization

Figure 2. High-level structure of a global application built on a Web Services system.

In short, very careul attention must be paid in the early stage to ensure the addition o globalizationeatures does not bring any inconsistencies to the whole system.

CodingFollowing the design phase, globalization add-in coding can be either invisible or visible.

Using the APIs o Java and other programming languages (i they provide adequate support or global-

ization), programmers can deal with many basic globalization eatures, such as the representations ordate, time and number.

I third-party sofware products are included in the globalization process or in globalized code, program-

mers can work out the coding by reading through the products documentation as usual, and then embed

them into the whole solution. A typical example o a third-party product that might be embedded is alinguistic services, such as a machine translation.

For commonly-used culture-specific business logic components, programmers can work out stand-alone

modules to encapsulate the business unctions or all supported countries/regions. Tese can even beshared and reused across the platorm and between programs and solutions i they are appropriately ap-plication-independent. ypical examples are modules dealing with tax calculation, postal addresses, namesequences, etc.


11/16



TranslationContent can be prepared at the same time as coding is going on. When content is ready, it is translated.Tere are many articles and books about translation, its process, tools and standards, practices andmethodologies, so detailed discussions is not included here.

Te only specific item o mention is that a development team will typically need a translation coordinator(in some cases it is preerable that this be the same person who will take the role as translation testingcoordinator) in the development team or globalization solutions. It is recommended that the person jointhe content preparation group, help to organize the source file structures, and then start translation andtesting coordination.

Tis typical work flow is illustrated in Figure . Typical translation work flow.

Development Team

Translation Coordinator

Translation Service Center

Simplified ChineseTranslator GermanTranslator ArabicTranslator

Extracting

Creating

Coordinating

Controlling

DistributingManaging

Packaging

Translating

source

file

source

file

source

file

source

file

sourcefile

translatedfiles

Simplified

Chinese

file

German

file

Arabic

file

translated files (Simplified

Chinese, German, Arabic)

Figure 3. Typical translation work flow.

Testing

I an application is designed and developed or globalization by closely ollowing the single executablemodel, unction testing or all language versions will be greatly reduced because, or language-independent unctions, only one version (usually the source language version) must go through unctiontesting in order to ensure basic unctional soundness

Afer conducting the unctional testing, the testing goes to culture-sensitive contents and globalizationeatures. Tere are several aspects to this testing:

. Localization testing ocuses on the ollowing:

Whether the user language interace conorms to appropriate cultural conventions. Whether character set(s) are invoked correctly and display properly.


12/16



Whether language/country/region-sensitive inormation is displayed in a culturally expectedrepresentation ormat (Figure ).

Whether the bi-directional data is displayed correctly.

Figure 4. Localization testing checks to see if naming/address/date

representations conform to the cultural conventions.

. ranslation testing is to check translation accuracy and contextual accuracy. Tough there are lots oways to control translation quality during translation cycle, but sometimes it is not easy to check theaccuracy without the context. For example, the word single would mean a room or one person i itis used or hotel service (Figure ), but can also mean a person who is not married. Only knowledge

o context will ensure proper translation.

-

SingleDouble

Triple

Suite

Figure 5. It is not easy to figure out translation accuracy without the context.


13/16



. Linguistics testing checks whether the linguistics services provided by the application conorms toconventions in the target country or region. ypical examples are machine translation, text-to-speechand speech-to-text technologies, transliteration, etc.

. Usability testing establishes whether the application really fits the end-users cultural expectations.Usability testing is user-driven, not technology-driven, and quality is defined by user satisactionrather than product/solution deects. Extensive and ongoing user evaluation, not just some user test-ing, must be undertaken to ensure that applications are culturally appropriate. Where possible, nativespeakers living in the target region should be used or ormal review or extensive survey. For example,i an application uses the product o machine translation, only native speakers can provide the needed

level o user validation beore roll-out.

MaintenanceIn addition to the routine maintenance tasks, it is also important to prepare well or possible changes due

to globalization. Having a well-designed globalization solution, it is only needed to maintain one codebase/executable. ypical maintenance issues may include:

Adding new languages/countries/regions:Tis usually has little or no impacts on the existing language sets and overall architecture. It usually in-volves arranging translation o culture-dependent contents, and updating the business logic or language/country/region-dependent computing (such as adding specific tax calculations).

Changing or adding globalization features:Tis usually has no impact on other eatures and the overall architecture unless addition o a new eature

may require modification/extension o an existing eature or its implementation. A typical example wasthe addition o the Euro into currency lists when it came into use in . Tis usually involves codingefforts, so the overall design should be well prepared or the potential changes.


14/16



Conclusions

Tis paper outlines basic considerations that must be taken into account or globalization to be effectivelyincluded in applications. Only by considering globalization requirements rom the start o product de-velopment can globalization be effi ciently dealt with. Knowing what must be dealt with and when allowsorganziations to appropriately plan or globalization requirement. Tis paper has outlined many o theactors that must be considered in developing globalized applications.

Endnotes

Globalization, in this context, is the proper design and execution o systems, sofware, services, andprocedures so that one instance o sofware, executing on a single server or end-user machine, canprocess multilingual data and present culturally correct inormation (e.g., collation, date, and numberormats).

Automatic translation o human language by computers.

API is a sofware interace that enables applications to communicate with each other. An API is theset o programming language constructs or statements that can be coded in an application programto obtain the specific unctions and services provided by an underlying operating system or serviceprogram.

A variant o an original product that implements national language support or a particular region othe world.

In sofware engineering, the process o adapting an internationalized product or a specific language,

script, culture, and coded character set.

Bi-directional: Scripts such as Arabic and Hebrew has general text flow which proceeds horizontallyrom right to lef. But when they mix in other languages and numbers that display rom lef to right,

they require what is called bi-directional support.


15/16


16/16

The Localization Industry Standards Association7 Route du Monastre CH-1173 Fchy Switzerland

Writen by Xiao Hui Zhu ( ), IBM China

white papers in globalization

Documents