Internationalization

Internationalization is the designing of a product in such a way that it will meet the needs of the users in many countries or can be easily adapted to do so.  Internationalization may mean designing a web site so that when it is translated from English to Spanish, the layout still works – many words in Spanish have more characters and therefore take up more space on the page in Spanish than in English.

According to Investopedia “products that are internationalized often must be localized to fit the needs of the country`s users. For example, an internationalized software program would need to be localized to display the date November 14 for use in the United States and as 14 November for use in England.

Internationalization can also refer to the design of an educational curriculum that will enable students to thrive in foreign countries and in their interactions with other cultures.

In economics, Internationalization has been viewed as a process of increasing involvement of enterprises in international markets, although there is no agreed definition of internationalization or international entrepreneurship.  There are several internationalization theories which try to explain why there are international activities.

In other words, if you internationalize your design or develop your content, application, specification, and so on, in a way that ensures it will work well for, or can be easily adapted for, users from any culture or region or language.

The word Internationalization is often abbreviated to `i18n`. This is widely used abbreviation derived from the fact that there are 18 letters between the `i` and the `n`.

The fundamental aspect of Internationalization is to ensure that the technology supports text in any writing system of the world.  This is why W3C technologies are built on the universal character set Unicode.  It may be necessary to also support other legacy character sets and encodings

The key message is that design needs to be flexible enough to accommodate local needs.

International Activity:

The International Activity works with W3C Working Groups, related standards, bodies and with designers, developers and content authors generally to raise awareness of, and thereby avoid issues related to international use of the web.  It also promotes solutions for the needs of specific cultures, languages and writing systems.

It does this, by reviewing specifications, providing advice to developers and working groups, and developing guidelines, specifications and  outreach materials.

Its mission is to ensure that the World Wide Web is worldwide.

 Questions:

• What do you understand by 'Internationalization'?
• Explain International Activity.