Internationalization and localization

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In computing, internationalization and localization (also internationalisation and localisation) are means of adapting software to different languages, regional differences and technical requirements of a target market.

Description

Internationalization is the process of designing a software application so that it can potentially be adapted to various languages and regions without engineering changes.

Localization is the process of adapting internationalized software for a specific region or language by adding locale-specific components and translating text.

Localization (which is potentially performed multiple times, for different locales) uses the infrastructure or flexibility provided by internationalization (which is ideally performed only once, or as an integral part of ongoing development).

See also

External links

JavaScript and internationalization

JavaScript internationalization API

Web hosting

  • Multi-regional and multilingual sites @ support.google.com
    • Keep the content for each language on separate URLs.
    • Don’t use cookies to show translated versions of the page.
    • Consider cross-linking each language version of a page. That way, a French user who lands on the German version of your page can get to the right language version with a single click.
    • Avoid automatic redirection based on the user’s perceived language. These redirections could prevent users (and search engines) from viewing all the versions of your site.
    • Google uses the content of the page to determine its language, but the URL itself provides human users with useful clues about the page’s content.
    • Signaling the language in the URL can also help you to discover issues with multilingual content on your site.
  • Subdomains or subfolders for language specific sites? @ moz.com
    • Comment 1:
      • The rationale is that subfolders will have links from all parts of the site including from the different language section. For subdomains your ranking might fluctuate between different languages.
      • Subdomains are not used very often except to differentiate a primary domains core business and purpose. If it is usually just language, a subfolder is what everyone normally uses.
    • Comment 2:
      • You can go with either one. Your question is probably the number 1 asked question on Moz. LOL
      • I would do folders "if" creating a multi-lingual site. Let's take WordPress for example. 1 folder, 1 install, 2 languages, no multiple logins, 1 database.
      • For subdomains, there is no passing of PR. A subdomain is like having a brand new site. subdomain.example.com and example.com are completely different sites. The only reason I would run subdomains is if I am doing something where the "site search" algorithm will be tweaked a little... like craigslist.org. Every city has a subdomain and the algorithm may be just a little different. Maybe you may need a subdomain for security issues, but in general go with folders.
      • Also, the stronger example.com/english becomes, the more likely example.com/mandarin becomes. It shares link juice. This example doesn't happen when you use subdomains.
    • Comment 3:
      • My profesional opinion is surely sub-folders, keeping away from sub-domains (unless for a very specific reason needed).
      • 1. If you are building a multilingual site, you should also consider how you will be building back-links through various methods (content development, company blog, etc) and will those be done in each language to support the authority needed to build rankings in each language you are working to expand on?
      • 2. If you are going to be building different divisions of the domain (Chinese, and perhaps later going French, German, etc), consider building out TLD's for each domain that's needed in specific languages and focus on building those separate sites. That way you can focus on content development, social media and marketing efforts specific to each language, thus improving your options for the search in each country.
  • How should I structure my URLs for both SEO and localization?
  • A Strategy for i18n and Node.js by John Resig

Internationalization services

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