Internationalization & Localization

Internationalization (i18n) is the process of designing a software application so that it can potentially be adapted to various languages and regions without engineering changes. Localization (l10n) is the process of adapting internationalized software for a specific region or language by adding locale-specific components and translating text

Here are a number of guidelines for designing content with international audiences in mind:

Think About Global Users

Be Aware of the Cultural Significance of Colors

For example, the color red is associated with warning and danger in Western cultures, while it symbolizes luck and happiness in some Asian cultures, like China and Japan.

Avoid Using Flags to Represent Languages

Language and country are different concepts. Flags are symbols that represent countries or nations while languages represent a shared method of communication between people. For example, Spanish is spoken in 29 countries and Spain is only one of them. Countries like Canada have more than 1 official language. Which language do you think the maple flag represents?

When designing a language selector, use plain text despite its lack of visual appeal. Only use flags to represent countries, not languages.

Design for Text Expansion

When English text gets translated to another language, the translated text can be as much as three times longer. Leave blank space around condensed UI components, such as buttons and tabs.

Make UI components expandable whenever possible. Do not assign a fixed-width or height to your UI component unless you have a good reason.

For longer text, wrapping is a good solution. Be aware of the potential vertical expansion since translated text will take more lines.

Truncation with hover text can be a compromise. Be aware that this brings the risk of making the UI less effective.

Right to Left

In certain languages like Arabic and Hebrew, text is read from right-to-left (RTL) necessitating your entire design to be flipped. A modular design approach will come in handy while accommodating RTL languages. For example, the application is designed to flip neatly for Hebrew and other RTL languages as shown below:

When localizing, the elements below should not be horizontally mirrored in RTL languages:

• Main layout sections

• Images, except when they correspond to direction (example: arrows)

• Graphs (x– and y–axes are always shown in the same orientation in all languages)

• Clocks

• Video controls and timeline indicators

Most of the recent native frameworks are now mirroring aware, making it easier to create a mirrored layout with very limited code changes.

Text Length and Size Expansion Considerations

When UI text gets translated into another language, the text length often changes. For example, English is a very compact language, leading to longer translated text in most cases.

The general rule for text expansion is: “the shorter the English text, the longer the translated text is likely to be”. The following table shows the average text expansion rate for different English text lengths from IBM’s localization guidelines:

English word expansion guidelines

In addition to English text length, the target language also has an impact upon the amount of expansion. The following table shows the expansion factor for the English text “Share” into various languages:

Expansion factor for the English word “Share”

In general, Asian languages are more space-friendly since they tend to be more compact than European languages. But there’s no “always”. CJK (Chinese, Japanese and Korean) languages have more complicated characters than Latin characters and their characters tend to be more square, thus taking more horizontal space. Japanese is especially problematic due to it’s use of Katakana for transliteration of foreign words. For example, “Follow” in English and Japanese both have 6 characters, but Japanese is 20% longer than English due to wider characters.

Date and Time

• Basic date format: dd-mmm-yyyy, for example 15-Aug-2020

• For the current day and the day before that you may use Today and Yesterday

• Basic time format: #0:00 PM/AM (for example 1:36 PM)

• For combined date and time use the word at. For examples: 05-Mar-2020 at 7:27 AM or Yesterday at 12:16 PM

Decimals

Headers

Labels

Capitalization

We use different capitalization styles for different types of content to improve scannability, organize information, and guide users to key actions.

When building new LUX products, also align capitalization practices with platform conventions to match user expectations.

Capitalization Styles

Title Case: Most Words Are Capitalized

Use title case for menu labels, buttons, navigation, and section headers.

Do capitalize

• The first letter of nouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs, and pronouns

• The first and last words of the text element

• The second word of a hyphenated compound unless it is an article or preposition (for example: “Quick-Search Options” and “Add-on Choices”).

Don’t capitalize

• Articles (“a,” “an,” “the”) or prepositions with fewer than five letters (“to,” “on,” “at,” “by,” “from”) unless they’re the first or last words of the text element.

Sentence Case: Most Words Are Lowercase

Use sentence case for all body copy, image captions, and secondary, editorial subheadings.

Only capitalize the first word of the text element, as well as any proper nouns.