Internationalization and Localization

Offered By: University of Washington via edX

Course Description

Overview

How do you make sure the international audience for a software product has the best user experience possible? How do you adjust your digital marketing efforts to the peculiarities of the target audience in each market? And how do you tailor the end-to-end customer experience in a market-specific way, from pre-sales to product use to help support?

This program will teach you all that is needed to release a digital product internationally, to a global audience spread across many different local markets.

You will learn about internationalization, the preparation of software, services or websites for a release beyond its source locale. Internationalization includes the enablement of regional formats and proper encoding, as well as meeting a range of other market-specific requirements. You will find out how to plan for different markets during product design.

Then you will get introduced to localization, the process of adapting digital products to a set of specific locales or markets. This often, of course, includes translation into foreign languages, as catering for the different markets means ensuring the best language experience. It can also include the customization of features or adjusting marketing efforts by market.

Syllabus

Courses under this program:
Course 1: Introduction to Internationalization and Localization

The first MOOC to teach internationalization and localization end to end. Learn how a digital product needs to be designed to be world-ready and how it is getting adapted to the needs of all its international target markets. This introductory course covers all the basics!

Course 2: Internationalization: Creating Digital Content for the World

Learn how a digital product becomes world-ready: how does it need to be designed for worldwide release without altering its code for each market? Who needs to be involved in which stages of the process? How do you doassure quality for world-readiness?

Course 3: Localization: Adapting Digital Content to Local Markets

Learn what it takes to tailor digital products for international markets through localization. See how translation works in today’s industry. Find out what other steps a localization project entails and how cost, schedule and quality are managed.

Courses

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6 weeks, 2-5 hours a week, 2-5 hours a week
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Are you a developer who wants to understand how their software can get released internationally, without their source code having to be altered? Or are you a PM responsible for launching a website across different markets? Or someone who is just curious to understand how digital products can be launched worldwide and in various languages? Then this is the course for you!

In this introduction to internationalization and localization you will learn
- Why it makes sense to release an app or a site outside of its original market in the first place
- What markets to cover first, for example those that have specific legal requirements around availability of a particular language
- The basic concepts and key terms of the industry: for example, how using Unicode and considering different time formats are both part of internationalization, how adapting the user interface of a software application is part of localization and what resource files have to do with localizability
- The different types of international releases and their specific challenges
- The different localization methods
- The history of the industry and important trends
- Roles and responsibilities
- Localization sourcing models, including outsourcing to so-called language service providers
- How to work successfully in the very international localization industry
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4 weeks, 2-5 hours a week, 2-5 hours a week
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Want to learn how to create a digital product that is truly ready for the world? One that can be released in many markets and for different languages without any alterations to its code? This is the course for you! It shows you everything a developer or PM needs to know to keep in mind when working on software or websites that will be consumed across different markets.

This course is an introduction to internationalization, the process of developing the core of a digital product whose features and design are not solely based on a single language or locale. You will learn how to cater for different writing systems, regional formats and even directionality of scripts like the Arabic one. You will also learn about design requirements around localizability that need to be met before you can even start with translating your product into other languages. And you will get a glimpse at the challenges of creating products that don’t offend foreign markets because they are culturally or politically insensitive.

This course will show what needs to be done to ensure the best user experience in international markets even before localizing.
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6 weeks, 2-5 hours a week, 2-5 hours a week
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Want to know how to make your product relevant worldwide? Curious what it would take to have your app release in a set of international markets? Interested in what would be needed to show your website in several foreign languages? Learn what it takes to tailor digital products to a set of international markets through localization.

This course shows you all the steps a company needs to take when releasing their software or websites in different markets. Industry experts will give you an introduction to localization, the adaptation of digital content to the requirements of a foreign market. This very often includes translation for the target markets with modern translation tools, including machine translation – and the management of translation assets, but it entails a lot more work through the different stages of a localization project tha tailors a product to the local consumer. You will also learn about:
- Setting up and managing localization projects
- The different project stages of localization projects
- Defining the scope
- Cost management
- Schedule management
- Quality assurance and control for localization
You will alsofind out about how to work in the localization industry and learn new skills relevant to localization, software development, digital content and project management.

Equipped with knowledge from this course you will be able to build your own localization strategy and find the right ways to reach your potential customer worldwide.

Taught by

Jan Grodecki, Agustín Da Fieno Delucchi, Pavel Soukenik, Soren Eberhardt and Jorge Russo dos Santos