Day three of this year’s Code for America Summit followed an unconference format. Luke Crouch and I facilitated a session called “Localization: Benefits & Challenges.” During the session, each of us talked about why we find localization a valuable and beneficial activity, challenges to localization and brain-stormed tools and solutions.

Here are our notes. If you’re working on localization/internationalization in open source projects, especially mobile web apps, I’d love to hear from you!

Why localize?

• greatest need for access to info is often non-english speaking
• human needs are language agnostic, services should be as well
• incorporating all perspectives requires crossing languages
• empower cross-cultural understanding

What needs L10n?

• websites
• documentation
• knowledge bases
• phone trees
• SMS
• forums
• social media
• print media

Challenges

• keeping content up to date
• maintaining parity with english-language content
• machine translation vs human translation
• quality assurance
• analytics
• keeping entire loop translated / fractured experiences
• cost
• selecting and prioritizing languages
• fonts / non-roman alphabets
• right-to-left languages and user interactions
• partnership building takes time
• determining best practices
• trust between communities?
• socio-political context

Solutions

Note: Internationalization (I18n) is the process of preparing a project for localization. Localization (L10n) is the process of translating content.

Approaches

• have users be translators
• concentrate on building local communities
• *listen* to needs of users. what do they need translated?
• user interface vs content
• platforms & tools address user interface
• content is trickier: micro-sites, data stores, other?

Tools (libraries for L10n)

• gnu gettext: https://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/ implemented in many languages
• jed: http://slexaxton.github.io/Jed/
• webl10n.js: https://github.com/fabi1cazenave/webL10n
• many more…

Platforms (for collecting/managing translations)

• Pontoon (in development by Mozilla): https://pontoon-dev.mozillalabs.com/
• CrowdIn: http://crowdin.net/
• Transifex: https://www.transifex.com/
• Babelzilla: http://www.babelzilla.org/
• Pootle: http://translate.sourceforge.net/wiki/

Action items moving forward

• establish best practices
• create a turn-key process and/or technology stack
• organized translation camps

“One-thing” takeaways

Unconference facilitators asked each member of the session to provide a “one-thing” take-away from the session.

• Localization is not just an international issue
• Frame of reference for doing localization
• Localization is solvable and urgent
• We can work together right now to make this better