Creating a Plan for Internationalization and Localization Tuesday, October 10, 2011 Adam Asnes CEO, Lingoport adam@lingoport.com @adamasnes Kent Grave Localization Manager Cisco Systems

Lingoport Internationalization Services Assessment Project planning I18n development I18n testing Localization integration Globalyzer Internationalization software Find and fix i18n issues in code Support developer teams

Globalization Globalization (g11n) has two components : Internationalization (i18n) : software engineering to enable localization – Global Scalability Localization (L10n): culture specific resources (translation, etc.) – Market Specificity

Nobody Globalizes Just Cause It’s Cool We love revisiting code we’ve already developed and paying tons of money to translators! Distracting from “Real Work”

Developers: Is It Internationalized? Most don’t know the answer Developers often underestimate i18n requirements Just string externalization, right? Agile or other feature and release requirements often overrun less formally measured i18n requirements There is a Management Value in being able to confirm global readiness

Organization Issues Lots to lose in time, revenue, costs, user experience and product acceptance when code isn’t well internationalized Few systematic tools and support for global-ready software development & Localization Development moves fast, teams can be diverse Got Agile? Poor understanding of requirements

Internationalization is Expensive! After development $100’s of thousands and more for serious applications Must revisit existing code Months to years delay During development Incidental, but still real costs Processes Forethought Requirements Measurement

Sobering Experience 1 million line app? $500K+ dev 18n costs PLUS localization 6 months? Much more? Big delays? When presented with i18n costs, timeframes, risk Many projects die Many postponed Some companies fade away

Getting organized Creating an actionable plan

Assessment and Plan Building What’s in code Strings Locale-unsafe functions/methods Programming Patterns Static References What’s not in code Requirements Locale Handling Data operations Database schema

Traditional Approach - repeat, and repeat, and repeat, and repeat

Globalyzer Server and Clients Server Client Command Line

Create a Plan Tasks Schedule Staffing Costs Requirements doc, assessment or best practices are not a plan

Ongoing Globalization

Teams Are Small and Distributed Source: Antelink software development survey, antelink.com

Organizational Perceptions of G11n Developers: Straightforward, simple, handled Tier 3 bugs, at best Features come first Not enough time L10n Managers: Issues come up with every release Tier 1,2 &3 bugs Not enough support from dev. No way to verify until localization Lack deep knowledge of code Business Managers: Sales/biz expectations Time to market Over budget and late

Ongoing i18n Make measuring i18n part of an ongoing process, like a nightly build Regular requirement for development – part of every cycle, agile or otherwise Build an i18n testing strategy that leverages Localization testing as well. Pseudo-locales

Catch Bugs Early! Source: “Software Internationalization Tools and Solutions” - Xerox Maintenance Localization 30 x 15 x 7 x 4 x 2 x Development Phase when an I18N bug is detected Acceptance

Ongoing Globalization Focus on leveraging expertise Tools help you scale Staff experts Training Keep repeating the globalization value message Get help repeating the message Fight Entropy!

Questions & Answers Adam Asnes adam@lingoport.com Twitter: @adamasnes Kent Grave Cisco Systems Resources http://www.lingoport.com Globalyzer http://www.globalyzer.com Blog http://i18nblog.com Contact us for a detailed individual presentation, or i18n needs discussion Try Globalyzer at http://globalyzer.com