internationalisation

programming (i18n, globalisation, enabling, software

enabling) The process and philosophy of making software

portable to other locales.

For successful localisation, products must be technically

and culturally neutral. Effective internationalisation

reduces the time and resources required for localisation,

improving time-to-market abroad and allowing simultaneousshipment. In orther words, internationalisation abstracts

out local details, localisation specifies those details for a

particular locale.

Technically this may include allowing double-byte charactersets such as unicode or Japanese, local numbering, date and

currency formats, and other local format conventions.

It also includes the separation of user interface text

e.g. in dialog boxes and menus. All the text used by an

application may be kept in a separate file or directory, so

that it can be translated all at once. User interfaces may

require more screen space for text in other languages.

The simplest form of internationalisation may be to make use

of operating system calls that format time, date and

currency values according to the operating system's

configuration.

The abbreviation i18n means "I - eighteen letters - N".

(1999-06-28)