Many applications that are developed today are available around the globe. People from Australia, Poland, Russia, USA can easily play a game developed in Germany. The sky is the limit, but one question remains: Will everyone enjoy the game in the way they were meant to?
IS TRANSLATION ALL IT TAKES?
People are different, but it’s not the language which differs us from another, it’s culture and mentality. There are numerous factors that influence people’s choice in applications and we should always aim at delivering solutions that fit everyone in the same manner. There are things considered fun in the US, yet those same features of the app may be misunderstood or even considered abusing in some countries.
LOCALIZATION TESTING
What does all this mean in terms of testing? Well, more work and less play, however, the efforts are totally worth it. Considering all that was written above, what should we look for in the first place?
- Localization brings changes to text and that means possible overlap, misalignment, , etc.
- Issues with handling files with extended characters in their file names and paths
- Errors in concatenated strings and in strings composed using placeholders
- Sorting issues related to that specific language’s alphabet
- Consider determining what new inputs will do to the app. New alphabet is a whole new ocean of opportunities to hackers and certain combinations of letters may simply crush an app.
- Speaking of letters, does your app understand all the symbols new alphabet has to offer? Does it display them appropriately?
- Incorrect metric conversions, numeric formats, separators, and negatives
All these are places you definitely need to look for new bugs, however, they are not covering all. Perhaps you know several different areas worth attention?