New FAQ for review: Defining Localization, Internationalization & Globalization

The GEO task force has decided to send new articles, FAQs and tutorials out for review to this list before final publication, in order to incorporate as much feedback as possible.  Here is a first instance of this policy, from Susan K Miller at Boeing.


How do you define localization, internationalization and globalization? How are these concepts related?
http://www.w3.org/International/questions/qa-i18n.html



Please send comments to this list.



NOTES:
We have already discussed at some length the order of sections.  Having started with G11N, I18N then L10N - which seems logical from a top down perspective and from the point of view of actual application to a particular product - we finally decided on L10N, I18N then G11N.  The latter was felt to be more concrete and more easily assimilated for the first time reader: localization is very concrete and probably seems readily understandable, and then the definition of i18n most likely modifies their perception slightly, but without a great leap into the abstract, and the g11n definition then continues that trend.  In addition, we found it hard to define i18n without referring to l10n - which we therefore felt we had to define first.

So the order is based on pedagogical reasons and we are likely to resist changing it.  Note however that we bring out the order in which these things are typically applied in the last section "Putting the concepts together".

Also, we appreciate that there are many definitions of these things out there, and everyone has their favourite.  We are attempting to establish some simple definitions that will work for us.  In particular, we have already discussed the Microsoft use of the terminology, which differs somewhat.


============
Richard Ishida
W3C

contact info:
http://www.w3.org/People/Ishida/ 

W3C Internationalization:
http://www.w3.org/International/ 

Publication blog:
http://people.w3.org/rishida/blog/
 

Received on Tuesday, 5 October 2004 11:39:23 UTC