An Increased Appreciation for Software Localization
Having lived all my life in India and the United States so far, I have never had a language issue. I have been comfortable communicating with people in English. This week I am in Frankfurt for the Frankfurt Book Fair – one of the largest of its kind that draws hundreds of thousands of people from across the globe. I am fascinated by the representation here from people across the globe – all the way from Latvia, to Vietnam, to Africa, to Brazil, to really some of the most remote corners on planet. As I am with all of these people, I see how one can get handcuffed and language constrained which made me additionally appreciate all the work that localization engineers do, more than ever before. Despite the language constraint, I was so connected with the people at the fair from the technology angle, which further re-assures the global penetration of software and devices. This is the bridge that localization engineers have created – a bridge whether you are a developer, or a content maker or a tester.
For example, we at QA InfoTech, specialize in localization testing, providing Quality Assurance and testing services for several clients in scores of languages, none of which we actually know besides English. This experience now gives me a better opportunity to appreciate what our testers do despite not knowing the language – whether it is localization functional testing, or a checklist/nuances to test for various locales, or a repository of keywords to enhance the testing productivity across locales, or working with content SMEs to integrate our testing efforts with theirs etc. All of these tighten the ecosystem to create global applications which have become a necessity off-late for any organization. Thanks to the Frankfurt Book Fair – I will see globalized applications with a greater sense of appreciation moving forward, acknowledging all the efforts that have gone into it, behind the scenes.
