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:

Color

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.

Flags

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.

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 Expansion

Always design with text expansion in min. 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.

Length and Size

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:

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

Date and Time should always be stored in UTC to allow it to be converted and displayed in multiple time zones. LUX components and guidelines follow the conventions detailed below by default:

• 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.

All applications built for Verint should allow the above defaults to be automatically changed based on the users specified browser locale (or manual setting if an application allows it). Details of country and region specific conventions are available here.

Many frameworks and libraries (such as Moment.js) offer full and constantly updated internalization features for easy localization of dates and times.

Decimals

Despite being the conventional standard (and the LUX default) Great Britain and the United States are two of the few places in the world that use a period to indicate the decimal place. Many other countries use a comma instead. Likewise, while the U.K. and U.S. use a comma to separate groups of thousands, many other countries use a period instead, and some countries separate thousands groups with a thin space.

As with Date and Time above, all applications built for Verint should allow the decimal character defaults to be automatically changed based on the users specified browser locale (or manual setting if an application allows it). Details of country and region specific conventions are available here.

Headers

Content Headers

Headers are titles and subtiles used to illustrate the importance of a section or page. The underlying heading order and structure is used index the structure and content of your applications pages for assistive tools.

In LUX, all headers should be at the same size as its corresponding section text or the next stop higher using the matrix below.

Accessibility

A few key factors to follow for an accessible headers:

• Provide enough color contrast between text and its background, check out the minimum recommended WCAG 2.0 color contrast ratio (4.5:1).

• Use relative em units to accommodate for user browser preferences.

• Don't skip HTML heading hierarchy levels in order to comply with screen reader guidelines.

• Use title case capitalization (see Capitalization section below).

Labels

Effective form labelling helps users understand what information to enter into a form Input. Using a placeholder text as a label is often applied as a space-saving method. However, this is not recommended because it hides context and presents accessibility issues.

• Provide a text label left assigned to its associated field (Checkbox and Radio buttons are exceptions to this rule)

• In situations when horizontal UI real estate is scarce or responsive design is used, render the label above it’s associated field.

• Ensure that all labels and associated fields are vertically aligned as columns in a table

Required fields

It’s well known that users don’t read instructions, and they are particularly less likely to read instructions at the top of a form. Form fields seem self-sufficient and each field has a specific instruction — its label, hence all required fields should be marked in close proximity with its associated label.

• Provide a star (asterisk) symbol position in superscript.

• Use the Verint warning color with the star symbol to identify it’s necessity.

Accessibility

A few key factors to follow for an accessible labels:

• Use the appropriate HTML <label> element and label for attribute.

• Labels must remain visible when an input gets focus.

• Labels must be announced to the screen reader on focus.

• Ensure the helper text that appears under an input is read when an assistive technology user stops at an input using ARIA.

• Use sentence case capitalization (see Capitalization section below).
  

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.

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.