Internationalization & Localization Testing
Agenda ●
Need and Purpose
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Definitions- G11N, I18N and L10N
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Unicode
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G11N Testing Approach for Global Products
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Internationalization Testing-Enablement Testing -Localizability Testing
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Localization testing -Functional Testing -Linguistic Testing
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Need & Purpose ●
English is NOT spoken by 2/3 of the world's population
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It is very difficult to survive in the current world if you are selling your product in only one country or geological region.
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Even if you are selling your product all over the world, but it is not available in the regional language, you are likely to face certain obstructions.
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Products developed in one location are used all over the world with different languages and regional standards. This increases the need to develop a globalized product and test it in different languages with varied regional standards.
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G11N, I18N and L10N
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Unicode Unicode is the worldwide standard which assigns a unique number to each and every character.
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(Image Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/ab/Unicode_logo.svg/1200px-Unicode_logo.svg.png)
The Unicode Standard has been adopted by many leaders in the industry such as Apple, HP, IBM, JustSystems, Microsoft, Oracle, Unisys and many more. Copyright Š by QAInfoTech. All rights reserved.
G11N Testing Approach for Global Products
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Internationalization Testing Internationalization testing can be further categorized into:
1)
Enablement Testing:- Enablement is an engineering exercise guaranteeing that the data input (keyboard,voice,paste), output (display,print,copy) and manipulation in an application can happen for all supported languages/scripts without corruption. The various scenarios for such a type of testing are-
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Graphical User Interface Scenarios Date and Time Settings Scenarios Search and Sort Scenarios Data Import and Export Scenarios Number Format Scenarios Printing Scenarios Unit of Measurement Scenarios
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Enablement Issues â—?
The appearance of default glyphs such as boxes, vertical bars, or tildes () indicate that the selected font cannot display some of the characters.
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â—?
Appearance of question marks instead of the text inserted, indicates the problem in Unicode-to-code-page conversion.
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â—?
Junk or random characters appearing instead of the text inserted, indicates that the application is using the wrong code page.
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Internationalization Testing 2)
Localizability Testing or Pseudo Localization Testing:-
Localizability testing is performed to ensure that there is no hardcoded string in the application. It helps in identifying the strings in UI which have not been externalized for localization (i.e. hard-coded strings).
Purpose Of Localizability Testing:● Finding the hard coded strings in the application UI ● Finding functional issues a) Application is installable b) Acceptance/sanity test cases pass seamlessly ● Finding UI issues
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How is Localizability Testing done? ●
Localizability testing is done through the pseudo-localized builds (commonly known as mock builds).
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The process of creating pseudo-localized builds starts from manipulating the linguistic resources of the application to reflect language/locale-specifics, followed by a build and then the runtime testing.
The steps of creating pseudo-localized builds are: ● Externalization of strings into a resource file ● Pseudo-translation ● Pseudo-localized builds Localizability testing should start a week or two prior to sending the first glossary kit (Gkit) to the translators or linguistic vendors.
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Localization Testing Localization testing can be further categorized into: Functional Testing :-
Functional testing is performed to make sure that all features of an application are working seamlessly on the localized operating system.
Linguistic Testing :- Linguistic testing is performed to make sure that there aren’t any translation or grammatical mistakes in the content of an application. UI issues are also tested such as truncation, font etc.
Localization testing becomes a collaborative effort of functional QA engineers and linguistic experts wherein both work simultaneously to ensure that functionality and the linguistic usage is accurate.
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Difference between Locales
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Localization Testing Challenges ➔
Localization expert engineers
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Domain expertise
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Hardware and software management
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Cumbersome linguistic process
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Coverage over all types of testing
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Localization Testing Best Practices ●
All functionalities/features work fine on the localized version of an application
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Linguistic sorting, file/folder accessibility, text searching, data input/output is accurate
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2 & 4-byte character support
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Date/time formats, calendar, currency, weights or measures are supported
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Always use localized username and password while testing.
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Functional testing should always be performed on native OS and use of MUI/MLP’s should be avoided
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Use of language translators
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Replicate behaviour on English versions of an application
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Use of localized keyboards
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Check the compatibility with supported localized browsers
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Verify that cut/copy/paste between applications work seamlessly
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Thank You
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