Growing Up with Globalization

Andrew Turgeon - IBM - Pittsburgh, PAapturgeo@us.ibm.com

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In the Beginning…

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New Customer!Except they require the following:

• 8 languages other than English

• Culturally-accurate data formats

• Timezone support for 12 unique locations

• Bidirectional text capabilities

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Wish I would have prepared for that before I wrote all this code…

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Agenda• Statistics Overview

• Globalization

• Getting Started

• Basic I18n - The Rails Way

• Variables & Pluralization

• Culture-Specific Data Formats

• Bidirectional Languages

• Testing

• Takeaways

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Statistics OverviewLanguages of the Internet (2015)

English26%

Chinese21%

Spanish8%

Arabic5%

Portuguese4%

Japanese3%

Russian3%

Malay3%

French3%

German3%

Other22%

74% of Internet traffic in 2015 was from users

who prefer or only speak languages other than

English

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http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats7.htm

520%

0%

1,750%

3,500%

5,250%

7,000%

Japa

nese

Ger

man

Engl

ish

Fren

ch

Oth

er

Span

ish

Mal

ay

Portu

gues

e

Chi

nese

Rus

sian

Arab

ic

Growth of Internet Users By Language (2000-2015)

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Statistics Overview

http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats7.htm

Statistics OverviewTimezones of the Internet

*Currently 39 Unique Local Times in use

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http://royal.pingdom.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/internet-users-time-zones-pingdom-5801.jpg

I get it. What do I need to do?

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Globalization (in a nutshell)

Internationalization (i18n)

Localization (l10n)

Our Job

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Step 1 Step 2

Watson Explorer

Lots of… English…19

Getting Started

• You can retrieve the locale from the user preferences (best)• Or you can try getting it from the accept language header (ok)

• Using the pre-bundled I18n framework in Rails, add the following to the controller:

*Make sure to use it in the html tag!

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Basic I18n - The Rails Way

Somewhere in a galaxy far far away…

../config/locales/en/activity_feed.yml

• DON’T REUSE same text• Hierarchy with short keys

BAD

*Note: Use ellipsis character (…), not three dots (...)21

../app/widgets/activity_feed/display.html.erb

Variables & Pluralization

• Use interpolated variables for dynamic data• More plural forms exist in other languages

Bad

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Culture-Specific Data Formats

• Define all your formats in key-value lookups, including defaults• Follow similar structure for currency, numbers, and percentages

Bad

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*Required hierarchy for I18n.l usage

Timezones• Always store in UTC (ISO6801)• Always consume in currently configured timezone• Make sensible defaults, but user setting is preferred

Bad

Example: Time visualizations in Javascript

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Bidirectional LanguagesNot all languages read the same direction!

• Use Unicode• For both right-to-left AND left-to-right text at the same time, use

embedded tags to indicate text direction

HTML5

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• Serve mirrored CSS for absolute/relative positioning

Testing• Static code analysis with i18n-tasks gem

• Testing dynamic translations (with RSpec):

• Transitioning from non-i18n to i18n, create a “foo” or longer word language pack for testing (easy to spot non-foo)

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Takeaways• Treat language as an abstraction from the beginning (sooner the better)

• Don’t try to be a hero when doing i18n

• Getting started isn’t too bad when you use a framework that is:

• Maintainable

• Modifiable

• Testable

• Translatable

• addresses main pitfalls discussed in this presentation

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Q&A

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Andrew Turgeon - apturgeo@us.ibm.com

Thanks!

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