What is internationalization testing?

Overview

Internationalization testing is a part of globalization testing. It is also known as I18N as there are 18 characters between I and n. It is done to ensure that software is compatible with many cultures and languages around the world and makes the software scalable and flexible.

The process of internationalization testing ensures that we develop applications that are compliant with languages and the user interface design is adjusted accordingly. Moreover, the code supports the lock formats of data such as date, time, pin number, address, etc. This means that the source code should be independent of any language.

Internationalization testing at front end

• Content: This includes all static and dynamic content in the form of text and graphics. The original source code is translated to property files by developers which can be tested by language experts for their accuracy. Content such as descriptive fields, forms, pop-up messages is included under this category. Moreover, this is important because characters in different languages have a separate encoding that must be incorporated.

• User interface: This includes elements like a menu, images, toolbar, info or error messages on a page, etc. The user interface should be flexible. enough to incorporate the words of any languages

• Cultural awareness: It is important to be culturally aware during this process as language slang or special meaning words specific to culture can only be added when one knows the culture itself. Moreover, the sensitivity of a culture must be maintained according to their common beliefs. This includes knowing how their dates, addresses, pins, etc are formatted as well.

• Feature: Different applications can take in cultural preferences to make different features available to the population. The Amazon website, for example, organizes its data according to different countries.

• File transfer: We need to ensure that text files transferred are not corrupted and to do so UTF-16 encoding is done. This is because UTF-16 can encode a lot more characters and make sure the file isn’t corrupted just because the language is different.

• Rendering: This is to ensure that when you load a page, the characters are displayed correctly for the language.

Internationalization testing at backend

The backend must have support for Unicode characters so that languages can be displayed correctly in the application. This will take up more disk space in the backend.

Advantages

• Increased reach for the application globally.
• It is not as expensive because we don’t have to develop it separately for different languages
• Improves the user experience

Example of internationalization

An example of internationalization is a website that makes the content available in various languages.