l10nandi18ntesting

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August 2010Aryaan Solutions, Bangalore

For Internal UseAryaan Solutions


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Significance of 10 and 18 Introduction

- Localization

- Internationalization- What is a locale?- What is a code page?

L10N Testing I18N Testing Test Case Why L10N & I18N testing?


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Localization is abbreviated as L10N becausethere are 10 characters between L and N inlocalization.

Internationalization testing is also called I18Ntesting, because there are 18 charactersbetween I and N in Internationalization.



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Localization: It is the process of customizing thesoftware product for each language that is to besupported. It is the aspect of development andtesting relating to the translation of the software

and its presentation to the end user.

Internationalization: Internationalization I18Nrefers to the process of designing, developing

and engineering the product that can beadaptable to various locales and regions withoutfurther any engineering changes.



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A locale consists of basic components suchas language, territory and code page. Themain objective of I18N is to externalize allcultural specific information from the code

which means this data is to be loaded at runtime so that, the software will behaveappropriately based on the localeset/installed to the client machine.



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Code page is nothing but assigning a specificnumber to each character in a language inorder to handle text. It is a mapping table ofcharacters to its numeric value. ASCII is agood example of code page



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Localization testing is a language verificationtesting mainly focusing on the appropriatenessof the translation in the following items.

GUI context

Online help files

Error messages, Dialog boxes

Tutorials/Readme filesDocuments such as User manual, Installation

guide, Release notes etc.



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Testing also involves in checking the GUIlayout, and making sure nothing is truncatedin the UI and Correctness and consistency ofthe Error messages.



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Internationalization is the process where thecode of the software is modified so that it iscompletely independent of any culturespecific information. The hard coded strings

of the software will be pulled out and storedin external files that are called as resourcebundles and these will load at runtime. I18nprocess typically involves the following tasks.



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A resource bundle contains locale-specific

objects, for example strings representingmessages to be displayed in the application. Theidea is to load a specific bundle of resources,based on a particular locale. The following arethe sample resource bundle properties files.

# German greeting files (greet_de.properties)Morn=Guten Morgan# English greeting file (greet_en.properties)Morn=Good morning

The lower case de and en represents thelanguage.



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Externalizing of strings, graphics, icons, textsetc. No string should be hard wired to thecode. It should be externalized to a resourcefile so that it can be translated to the

required language and can be applied duringrun time.

Selecting code page and defining code pageconversions



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Modifying all the text manipulation functions tobe aware of the code page.

Changing the logic of all the formatting functions

(Date, Time, Currency, Numeric, etc). Month, Day,Year formats supported as to which comes first?

Changing the Collation /sorting functions.

Sorting order will change depending upon thenative language. Specific rules will be defined forsorting process, based on the code-page used.



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The focus of I18N testing is as follows:Compatibility testing: Testing the product for

language compatibility, this includes testingthe product behavior in identifying andinitializing from its language environmentand its ability to customize to thatenvironment.



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Functionality testing: Functionality testing isthe core area of I18N testing .It typicallyincludes running the whole functionalityregression test on different language

environments and exercising the interfacewith native language strings. It involvesverifying the culture specific information suchas date/time display.

For Internal Use - Aryaan SolutionsFor Internal Use

Aryaan Solutions


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User interface Validation: To check for visualproblems such as text truncation or overlap,graphics issues or other visual problems.

Interoperability testing: It ensures that thesoftware interacts properly with targetedplatforms, operating systems, applications

(and versions) and so on.



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Usability testing: It evaluates the ease of useof the system (optional)

Installation testing: Testing to ensure if theproduct installation messages are displayedin a corresponding language when installingthe application on a dedicated server.



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Test case and test data needs to be created toVerify the Language specific translated string

or resource files are loaded by theapplication, depending on the currentlanguage and locale settings (client O/S)

Verify the Language specific translatedstrings rendered on user interface and errormessages.



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Verify the culture specific Date /time, sortorder, numeric and monetary formats, collateand sort are displayed according to locale.

Verify the customized colors and fonts on theweb server (Globalization)

Verify the product stability by inputtingvarious test data specific to requiredlanguage.



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Today the world is a global village, theproducts are developed in one remote of theworld, undergo globalization process,launched in multiple markets and used in

different remotes of the world. As aconsequence, the need of internationalizationand localization process and testingrequirement for the internationalized productis considerably increased.



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