Software Internationalization and Localization: An Introduction

322 Pages·1993·22.696 MB·English

by  Emmanuel Uren, Robert Howard, Tiziana Perinotti

Emmanuel Uren
Robert Howard
Tiziana Perinotti
an Introduction
Software
Internationalization
and Localization
An Introduction
Emmanuel Uren
Robert Howard
and
Tiziana Perinotti
VAN NOSTRAND REINHOLD
New York
Copyright © 1993 by Emmanuel Uren, Robert Howard, and Tiziana Perinotti
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 93-3316
ISBN 0-442-01498-8
All rights reserved. No part of this work covered by the copyright hereon may be
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Uren, Emmanuel, 1935-
Software internationalization and localization: An introduction
by Emmanuel Uren, Robert Howard & Tiziana Perinotti.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-442-01498-8
1. Computer software. 2. Electronic data processing
documentation. I. Howard, Robert, 1952- . II. Perinotti, Tiziana,
1960- . III. Title.
QA76.754.U84 1993
005.1'2—dc20 93-3316
CIP
Trademarks
Apple, HyperCard, and Macintosh are registered trademarks of Apple Computer Corporation.
Canon is a registered trademark of Canon USA.
Clipper is a trademark of Computer Associates.
CompuServe is a trademark of H&R Block, Inc.
dBASE, QuattroPro, and Paradox are registered trademarks of Borland International, Inc.
DR-DOS is a trademark of Digital Research Corporation.
Epson, FX80, and FX100 are trademarks of Epson America Inc.
Foxpro is a trademark of Microsoft Corporation.
Hewlett-Packard, Image, and New Wave are registered trademarks of Hewlett-Packard Company.
IBM, PC/AT, and PC-DOS are registered trademarks of International Business Machines Cor-
poration.
IBM PC/XT is a trademark of International Business Machines Corporation.
Lotus and Lotus 1-2-3 are registered trademarks of Lotus Corporation.
Motif is a registered trademark of Open Software Foundation.
MS-DOS, MSWord, Windows, and XENIX are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation.
Nomad is a trademark of Must Software International.
Open Look is a trademark of Sun Microsystems Inc.
PDP-7 is a trademark of Digital Equipment Corporation.
PostScript is a trademark of Adobe Systems Inc.
Red Ryder is a registered trademark of Red Ryder Enterprises Inc.
Quiz and Quick are registered trademarks of Cognos.
SAS is a trademark of The SAS Institute, Gary, North Carolina.
UNIX is a trademark of Unix System Laboratories, Inc.
iii
Disclaimer
The world of computers is a fast-changing one, so fast that many professionals
believe that it is impossible to buy a computer that is not obsolete by the time it
is available in stores. Someone somewhere will have a faster, more powerful
machine or variation in the development and marketing pipeline. This thinking
extends to software products, although occasionally one product will be "king" for
perhaps a couple of years before a competing product with more and better fea-
tures becomes available.
There has been, and there continues to be, a lot of excellent technical work in
the field of Internationalizing and Localizing software. Much of this work is
described in excellent technical manuals produced by various software manufac-
turers. Apart from our own experience in producing Localized versions of soft-
ware, we have had recourse to many of these manuals in writing this book. Some
of the manuals may have been replaced by later editions describing later ver-
sions of tools or techniques. We have tried to use the latest information available
consistent with the task of actually writing the book.
Since we have no control over what the software manufacturers produce, we
must introduce the caveat that there may be some technical inaccuracies.
In any case, if you are going to Internationalize, then we urge you to familiar-
ize yourself with the details of your computing environment manufacturer's
products.
iv
Credits
Copyright © 1988-1992, Power Up Software Corporation, San Mateo, California.
Figure 1-2. Express Publisher U.S. Version 2.03 and Express Publisher French
Version 2.03
WordPerfect® is a registered trademark of WordPerfect Corporation.
WordPerfect v5.1 character sets reprinted under authorization from WordPerfect
Corporation. All rights reserved.
Figure 3-1. WordPerfect 5.1 Character Sets: (1) Multinational 1 and (10) Cyrillic
Figure H-l. WordPerfect 5.1 Character Sets: Tables 0, 1, and 2
Figure H-2. WordPerfect 5.1 Character Sets: Tables 3, 4, 5, and 6
Figure H-3. WordPerfect 5.1 Character Sets: Tables 7, 8, and 9
Figure H—4. WordPerfect 5.1 Character Sets: Tables 10, 11, and 12
International Macintosh Character Sets © Apple Computer, Inc. Used with permission.
Figure 5-2. Macintosh Character Sets: Roman and Greek
Figure K-l. Macintosh Character Sets: Roman
Figure K-2. Macintosh Character Sets: Arabic and Central European
Figure K-3. Macintosh Character Sets: Chinese and Croatian
Figure K—4. Macintosh Character Sets: Cyrillic and Greek
Figure K-5. Macintosh Character Sets: Hebrew and Icelandic
Figure K-6. Macintosh Character Sets: Japanese and Korean
Figure K-7. Macintosh Character Sets: Thai and Turkish
Figure K-8. Macintosh Character Sets: Arabic Encoding and Hebrew Encoding
v
vi Credits
Reprinted from John G. Nelson, "Japanese Double Byte Character Processing,"
Windows/DOS Developer's Journal 3, no. 1. Copyright © 1992 R&D Publications.
Figure 6-1.Cursor Movement
Figure 6-2. Search Substring 'EaF Produces Illegal Find
Reprinted by permission from IBM, Disk Operating System, Keyboard and Code
Pages. Version 5.00, First Edition March 1991, pages 18 through 25.
Figure 3-2. DOS Code Pages: 437—U.S. English and 850—Multilingual (Latin 1)
Figure 1-1. DOS Code Pages: 437—U.S. English and 850—Multilingual (Latin 1)
Figure 1-2. DOS Code Pages: 852—Slavic (Latin 1) and 860—Portugal
Figure 1-3. DOS Code Pages: 863—Canadian-French and 865—Nordic
Reprinted by permission from IBM System/370 Reference Summary, GX20-1850-
3, Sections 9 through 12.
Figure 3-4. IBM EBCDIC Character Set
Reprinted by permission by Lexmark International Inc. from IBM Disk Operating
System, Keyboard and Code Pages, Version 5.00, First Edition March 1991, pages
5 and 15.
Figure E-l. U.S. and Foreign Keyboards 101 and 102.
Table 2 of ISO-8859-1 to ISO-8859-9 is reproduced with the permission of the
International Organization for Standardization (ISO). The complete standards
are available in the United States from the ISO member body, ANSI, 11 West
42nd Street, 13th Floor, New York, NY 10036 or from the ISO Central Secre-
tariat, Case postale 56, CH-1211, Geneva, Switzerland.
Figure 7-1. ISO Character Sets: ISO-8859/1—Latin 1 and ISO-8859/5—
Latin/Cyrillic
Figure J-l. ISO Character Sets: ISO-8859/1—Latin 1 and ISO-8859/2—Latin 2
Figure J-2. ISO Character Sets: ISO-8859/3—Latin 3 and ISO-8859/2—Latin 4
Figure J-3. ISO Character Sets: ISO-8859/5—Latin/Cyrillic and ISO-8859/6—
Latin/Arabic
Figure J-4. ISO Character Sets: ISO-8859/7—Latin/Greek and ISO-8859/8—
Latin/Hebrew
Figure J-5. ISO Character Sets: ISO-8859/9—Latin 5
Foreword
There is no choice. Personal computers and telecommunications have stitched
the world together. Creating world-ready software is an imperative, not an
option. The software market is global, and to compete you must design software
for worldwide customers.
Five to ten years ago the United States dominated the market for technology.
Today it is still the biggest market, but it is no longer dominant. Europe,
Japan, and even the emerging markets in Asia and Eastern Europe are setting
the pace in many technologies. To support their businesses they are demanding
the best and the most modern software products.
In addition, the world is fast becoming a community of technological peers.
The days are gone when customers outside the United States would use prod-
ucts in English, or the previous version of a product because the new version
had not been translated. Now, multinational companies making consumer goods
in Poland or computer chips in Thailand demand software that supports all of
their employees. Customers demand that quality standards be the same in Asia,
Eastern Europe, the United States, Europe, and Japan.
To survive and prosper software companies must design and build global prod-
ucts. Designing software for the U.S. market and then retrofitting it to Euro-
pean, Japanese, or Asian standards is no longer practical or economical. The
process is too slow, too error-prone, and too expensive. Designs must be global in
both concept and detail.
Software Internationalization and Localization covers both of those goals. It
provides a survey of design problems and backs that up with a wealth of details
about specific international standards and local exceptions. It will be equally
vii
viii Foreword
valuable to marketers, product managers, and developers. In the past, develop-
ment companies had to build their own compendia of standards and experience.
The authors now provide a ready-made guide. They offer the beginner a head
start and the experienced practitioner a review list.
The market is demanding excellent international products and will reward
those companies that can satisfy the demand. Those who read Software Interna-
tionalization and Localization will be well prepared to take advantage of the
global software market opportunities.
Kevin Cavanaugh
Director, International Product Management
Lotus Development Corporation
Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S.A.
Preface
The genesis for this book was an attempt to answer a translator's question of
"what do these computer companies mean when they talk about International-
ization and Localization of software?" After we completed the first draft of the
book, we realized that our audience was not only translators: anybody who
designs, builds, markets, and sells any software product outside his or her own
country has to confront and resolve the issues that we present.
Computer software applications and operating systems for both business and
personal computers are proliferating at a high rate. A substantial number of
these programs are written in the United States and many of the manufacturers
are then marketing their products outside the United States.
In the early days, software was delivered in one language only: English and
U.S. English at that. If someone spoke a different language that person had to
accept the program as written and figure out how to use it. Most computer users
were highly educated professionals who had considerable exposure to English
during their education and who had experience in working with programs writ-
ten in English. Both their computer experience and knowledge of English were of
use in making programs work.1
As computers, especially personal computers, became more and more common,
the typical users were no longer professional computer programmers, software
engineers, or hardware engineers. Software manufacturers realized that making
Un the world of computers, "early days" are usually only a year or so in the past. Any computer
popular ten years ago is now an amusing curiosity, while a machine in general use twenty years ago
is now fit only for a museum and the derisive laughter of the current crop of computer wizards.
ix