World is
flat. If you are reading this page, chances are that you are
experiencing this as well. It is very difficult to survive in the
current world if you are selling your product in only one country or
geological region. Even if you are selling in all over the world, but
your product is not available in the regional languages, you might not
be in a comfortable situation. Products developed in one location are
used all over the world with different languages and regional
standards. This arises the need to test product in different languages
and different regional standards. Multilingual and localization testing
can increase your products usability and acceptability worldwide.
Internationalization testing is the process, which ensures that
product’s functionality is not broken and all the messages are properly
externalized when used in different languages and locale.
Internationalization testing is also called I18N testing, because there
are 18 characters between I and N in Internationalization.
Internationalization,
Globalization and Localization, all these words are normally used
together. Though the objective of these word is same, that is to make
sure that product is ready for the global market, but they serve
different purpose and have different meaning. We will explore these
terms in more detail.
Globalization
Globalization
is the process of developing, manufacturing and marketing software
products that are intended for worldwide distribution. An important
feature of these products is that, they support multiple languages and
locale.
In a globalize product, code is separated from the
messages or text that it uses. This enables software to be used with
different languages without having to rebuilding the complete software.
Globalization is achieved through the Internationalization and localization.
It
is important to understand locale as supporting different locale is
more than supporting different language. In addition to languages and
geographical location, locale incorporate cultural information such as
time, date, font, currency convention etc. Differences in spelling,
currency and other conventions make testing with different locales
necessary.
Internationalization
In
I18N testing, first step is to identify all the textual information in
the system. This includes all the text present on the application’s
GUI, any text/messages that application is producing including error
message/warning and help/documentation etc.
Main focus of the
I18N testing is not to find functional defects, but to make sure that
product is ready for the global market. As in other non functional
testing it is assumed that functional testing has been completed and
all the functionality related defects are identified and removed.
I18N
testing can be divided in to two parts. First, to make sure that
application’s GUI or functionality will not be broken with the
translated text. Second to make sure that translation of all the
strings have happened properly. This activity is called Translation
Verification Testing and is normally conducted by person who knows the
language very well.
To make sure that application’s
functionality or GUI will not be broken after the translation a popular
technique known as pseudo-translation is used. In pseudo-translation
instead of translating it completely, it is translated in a pseudo
manner. For example an externalized string “Bad Command” can be
translated in Japanese as [JA XXXXX Bad Command XXXXXX JA]. Now if the
product is launched with locale as Japanese it should show the
externalized string as given above instead of “Bad Command”. There are
utilities to do this job for you, to do pseudo-translation of all the
externalized strings of your application. During pseudo-translation you
need to make sure that you are doing it roughly according to the rule.
For example, width is normally expanded up to forty percent for the
pseudo-translated strings as compare to the English.
As stated
above, In I18N testing focus is not on the functionality but on the
translation and locale related issues. Once all the externalized
strings are pseudo-translated, you need to make sure that you have test
case for every message or text element present in the system. Once it
is done, same set of test cases can be executed on the properly
translated build to make sure that translation is proper.
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