GILT: Globalization, Internationalization, Localization, Translation
Reprinted by permission from Globalization
Insider, Volume XI, Issue 1.5.Copyright the Localization Industry Standards
Association (LISA: www.lisa.org) and S.M.P. Marketing Sarl (SMP) 200x. March
22, 2002
Authors
Pierre Cadieux, Technology Editor, LISA Newsletter Bert Esselink, Chief Editor,
Language Internationational
As the title suggests, we should perhaps feel a little GILTy that of the above four
terms, only translation is generally well understood. In a past issue of the LISA
newsletter, Donald DePalma and Hans Fenstermacher argued that our industry cannot
even agree on what globalization, internationalization and localization mean. Don
and Hans also pointed out the lack of "coopetition", i.e. collaboration
among competitors, in our industry.
This article is a modest first step in what we believe is the right direction. It
is an example of coopetition between two periodicals focusing on the language industry
towards a simple objective that is beneficial to our whole industry: clarifying
our most basic terms. This article will be published, more or less simultaneously,
in both periodicals. We hope that others will take similar small steps…
From the dictionary
Why do we need definitions? Is the dictionary not enough? Consider the following
table that was built using the Merriam-Webster on-line dictionary (http://www.m-w.com/).
We searched for the GILTy terms and for "locale"; the results are sorted
by date.
translation 14th century rendering from one language into another
locale 1772 a place or locality especially when viewed in relation to a particular
event or characteristic
localization 1792 to make local: orient locally
internationalization 1864 to make international
globalization 1944 to make global
It is interesting to note how old these terms all are (and the dates here are for
the English language; a concept such as translation is obviously much older). It
is also interesting to note that globalization was introduced towards the end of
World War II. Although the last three definitions are not extremely enlightening,
it remains that all five definitions are quite compatible with their current use
in our industry. To be precise, only the terms locale and internationalization require
a slight semantic shift in our industry. To illustrate this semantic shift, just
compare the above definition of locale to the one provided by the Sun Solaris Operating
System Manual: "a collection of files, data, and sometimes code, that contains
the information needed to adapt Solaris to local market needs".
A short history
In the beginning, or shortly thereafter, there were people. And when one people
met another people, translation was born[1]. Then, somewhat later, came software.
And when people started translating software, some of the changes required were
not, strictly speaking, translation: changes to character encoding's, date and time
formats, sorting rules, etc. The term localization was used to more generally describe
any changes required to adapt a product to the needs of a particular group of people
generally in the same physical location or locale; in short, to make local as the
dictionary suggests.
A locale in our industry identifies a group of people by their common language and
cultural conventions; the group may or may not be in the same physical location.
French-Canadians, for example, are present mainly in the province of Quebec, but
there are several other groups in Manitoba, Ontario and New Brunswick. In our industry,
the word locale has become a virtual location, more akin to the concept of culture.
To wit, we name locales by language-country pairs; for example, French-Canada is
one locale, while French-France is another.
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Definition:
Localization of a thing is adapting a thing to the needs of a given locale.
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When multiple localization efforts were performed on the same product, it became
obvious that certain steps could be performed in advance to make localization easier:
separating translatable text strings from the executable code, for example. This
was referred to as internationalization or localization-enablement. This definition
represents a shift away from the dictionary: internationalization, in our industry,
is only the first step in the overall process of making international, as the dictionary
suggests.
Finally, when the "rest of the world" gained in importance, it was a marketing
imperative to have a strategy to sell all over the world: a so-called globalization
strategy! Unfortunately, when this commercial term was imported into the more technical
space of globalizing products, two different definitions arose.
The IBM internationalization glossary at
http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/library/glossaries/unicode.html
shows:
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globalization
The process of developing, manufacturing, and marketing software products that are
intended for worldwide distribution. This term combines two aspects of the work:
internationalization (enabling the product to be used without language or culture
barriers) and localization (translating and enabling the product for a specific
locale).
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The Microsoft glossary at
http://www.microsoft.com/globaldev/reference/Glossary.asp shows:
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Globalization
Designing and implementing software so that it can support all targeted locales
and user interface languages without modification to the software source itself.
This processing includes enabling for all target languages, and adding NLS support
for target locales.
...
Internationalization:
See Globalization
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From perusing about 6 other glossaries, it seems about evenly split: Mozilla agrees
with Microsoft, eLocale agrees with IBM, etc.
Globalization
The word globalization is a mine field these days. In the news, it is used to mean
economic globalization which, the anti-globalization groups counter, should be preceded
by globalization of social programs and human rights. While these uses of the word
are totally out of the scope of this article, it is interesting to note that both
sides agree on what globalization means, namely to make global - as the dictionary
suggests.
The globalization of a thing - be it a social program, a marketing strategy, a web
site, or a software product - is simply about spreading a thing to several different
countries, and making it applicable and useable in those countries. We suggest therefore
that our industry should follow the general meaning the word globalization already
has in other domains, which is simply the dictionary meaning.
Another important aspect to globalization is that it is never all-encompassing;
the target is never all the countries nor all the languages of the world. In fact,
of the approximately 6,000 languages on the planet today, typical globalization
efforts rarely target more than six at a time.
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Definition:
Globalization of a thing consists in adapting a thing to the needs of N locales.
Formula:
GLOBALIZATION = N * LOCALIZATION
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Internationalization
So where does internationalization fit into the above formula? Although we did not
need the internationalization concept to define the objective of globalization,
we will need it to define an effective globalization process.
To define internationalization, let's consider a couple of examples:
Internationalization of source code consists, among other things, of centralizing
text strings in resource files to make it easier for the translator to do his job
(and avoid accidental changes to source code).
Internationalization of documentation may consist in enforcing a consistent writing
style, standard terminology, controlled grammar rules, to make the text easier to
translate (and avoid errors).
It is clear that the general purpose of internationalization is to make translation
and localization easier (and avoiding errors thus increasing quality). It seems
the original definition of internationalization as localization-enablement was the
correct one.
That is the most general and fundamental intent: if you are going to do localization
N times, it makes sense to work out what operations you can perform just once beforehand
so that it makes the next N steps easier. If you consider the on-going maintenance
of a product, internationalization is effective even in the N=1 case. But as the
world gets smaller and smaller, we see N=6, 10, 12, etc. In such cases, internationalization
is simply inevitable.
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Definition:
Internationalization of a thing consists in any and all preparatory tasks that will
facilitate subsequent localization of said thing.
The purpose of internationalization is to make localization easier, faster, higher
quality and more cost-effective.
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Some may be surprised or disappointed not too see the more usual definitions:
"internationalization consists in making something language independent"
"internationalization consists in externalizing localizable items"
These so-called definitions suffer from several faults:
they are tasks, not fundamental definitions, and they are an incomplete list
they are too specific; eg. they don't apply well to internationalization of documentation
even as tasks involved specifically in software internationalization, they still
fail to describe the true nature of the activity (we intend to clarify the fundamentals
of software internationalization in a separate article)
A good definition tells us what something is, not how it is done. The definition
above defines internationalization for what it truly is, in a very general way,
independent of the specific thing to be internationalized. By reminding us that
internationalization is a very general idea, by reminding us that many people can
contribute in many different ways, it will ultimately allow us to generate a better,
more complete list of tasks for the specific thing to be internationalized.
The new formula for an efficient process thus becomes:
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GLOBALIZATION =
INTERNATIONALIZATION + N * LOCALIZATION
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The "GILT slide" below puts it all together.
Globalization is a two-step process: internationalization and localization.
There are usually several localization efforts happening in parallel.
Translation is often the largest part of localization.
So what about translation?
To complete our quartet of terms, we can show how translation fits into these key
processes. Once again, we can probably rely on the vernacular understanding of the
word and say that translation refers to the specifically linguistic operations,
performed by human or machine, that actually replaces the expressions in one natural
language into those of another. This has the effect of making translation just one
task – possibly the most time consuming, costly and vital, but as we have
seen not the only one – in adapting something to the needs of the given locale.
An interesting phenomenon is that much of today's new, emerging publishing standards,
such as content management systems and XML, place a new focus on the art of translation.
Where localization previously incorporated translation as "just one" of
the activities, these new publishing standards strip all the complexities from the
raw text, i.e. separate layout and structure from the "content", which
is one of the primary goals of internationalization. This means translators in localization
can finally start focusing on what they should really be focusing on – changing
one natural language into another.
We can see more and more practices and technologies that were previously very specific
to the "localization world" entering into the more traditional translation
industry. For example, translation memory tools are now commonly used by translators
who translate material which is not software related. Similarly, legal translators
may be faced with XML documentation while life sciences translators may have to
translate a piece of software running on a medical device.
As humanity evolves, so do languages and definitions. The concepts of translation
and localization may progressively merge. Localization may no longer be a separate
discipline since sooner or later all translators will have to know at least the
basics of localization – from translation to localization, and back again.
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[1] In the very early days before writing and communication, a different location
meant a different language.
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Pierre Cadieux (pcadieux@i18n.ca) is president of i18N Inc. (www.i18n.ca),
a firm specializing in internationalization training and consulting for embedded
systems, shrink-wrap software and Web sites. Pierre is the Technology Editor of
the LISA Newsletter. Formerly VP Technology at Alis, he pioneered the transparent
handling of Arabic and Hebrew languages and created the core bidirectional technology
licensed by Microsoft. As Director of Localization Technology at Browne Global Solutions,
he published the first generic model of Web globalization technologies. Pierre also
regularly presents workshops at LISA events
Bert Esselink has been active in multilingual publishing projects for over a decade.
After graduating in technical translation in Maastricht and doing coursework in
computational linguistics at the University of Amsterdam, he worked for several
years as a localization specialist and consultant for various localization firms.
Early 2000 he joined Lionbridge's consulting group. The second edition of his book,
A Practical Guide to Localization, was published in September 2000 and is used widely
throughout the localization industry. Bert is also one of the editors-in-chief of
Language International, the magazine for language industry professionals. He can
be contacted at bert_esselink@lionbridge.com.