Localization testing

[Me]:- Guruji, if I have to do localization testing, what questions I will need ask and get answers for effective testing

[Guruji]:- You ask variations of these questions

1.       What languages will the application be localized into?

2.       When you view each localization, are all the strings localized? Are all the strings supposed to be localized? (Some strings, such as the company name, may not be translated.)

3.       If you provide more than one language, how do you determine which one to show to the user? Read the browser's accept language? A user preference when they register?

4.       Will the localizations from a previous release be reused?

5.       Will server errors (such as response codes-404) be localized?

6.       Is there country-dependent formatting?

a)       Sorting

b)       Number formats (thousand place separator, decimal, and negative)

c)       Numerals-ordinal and cardinal numbers

d)       Units of measurement (U.S. versus metric)

e)       Currency (symbol and placement and the new Euro-some contain more than one symbol; place the symbol before the amount and after as well as with leading and trailing 0s and spaces)

f)        Calendar (Gregorian, Lunar, Hebrew, Thai, Korean, Japanese, Chinese)

g)       First week of year

h)       First day of week (Sunday or Monday)

i)         Date format and separator (mm-dd-yyyy or dd-mm-yyyy or mm-dd-yy, and using a period, dash, or slash to separate the fields)

j)         Time format (12-hour clock versus 24-hour clock and A.M./P.M. formats)

k)       Punctuation (quotes, exclamation marks, question marks, list separators)

l)         Address formats

m)     Name formats (last name last versus last name first)

n)       Phone number formats

7.       Is there language-dependent formatting such as spell check or sort order? (for example, in Finnish or Swedish, the word waffle should be sorted ahead of the word vegetable).

8.       Will complex scripts be supported? Are there different behaviors that should be observed here?

9.       Does the interface display correctly with RTL localizations?

10.    Does the interface properly display the extended ASCII range for each language you localize into?

11.    Does the interface properly display double-byte characters?

12.    Does the interface properly display Unicode-only characters?

13.    What encodings are supported (particularly for Russian [Cyrillic versus KOI-8] and Japanese [JIS versus SJIS])?

14.    Does your application specify fonts to be used? If so, make sure that the fonts you hard-code are able to display the language you are localizing into.

15.    Will this application be code page dependent?

16.    Will the application be pseudolocalized prior to release?

17.    Will all localizable strings be placed in a central location?

18.    Do all graphics and symbols make sense for the language? Many symbols, graphics, and images do not carry the same meaning in different cultures; for example, flags should not represent a language, and icons such as a mailbox may not exist in all regions.

19.    Are there other internationally sensitive issues-maps, country names, and so on?

author

Vinay Jagtap

A hard core Technocrat with over a decade of extensive experience in heading complex test projects coupled with real time experience of project management and thought leadership. Extensive experience in Performance, Security and Automation Testing and development of automation frameworks and ability to setup and execute Global service centers and Center of Excellences for testing.

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