Beyond Borders: Web Globalization Strategies

THE I18N AND L10N OF AN AUTOMOBILE

The principles behind internationalization and localization extend beyond web development, even to something much more concrete, like a car. A car, like a web site, is expensive to design and build. To minimize costs and maximize returns, a car manufacturer often develops a car model that can be easily adapted to numerous countries, instead of developing new models for each country. Doing so requires internationalization. The internationalization stage is the “behind the scenes” stage. People don’t buy internationalized cars; they buy localized cars. Internationalization mostly entails the extensive planning and testing that go into creating this global template of a car. For example, if the car will be sold ...