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How can you design applications for multiple languages and character sets?

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Designing applications for multiple languages and character sets is a crucial skill for application developers who want to reach a global audience and provide a user-friendly experience. However, it is not as simple as translating the text and changing the fonts. You need to consider various aspects of localization, internationalization, and encoding to ensure your application can handle different languages and scripts without errors or glitches. In this article, we will explore some of the key steps and best practices for designing multilingual and multi-character applications.

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Gennadiy Vaksman

Director, Engineering at TELUS Agriculture & Consumer Goods, 29K+ followers, 18,500,000 + views

1 Define your target languages and regions

The first step is to identify which languages and regions you want to support in your application. This will help you determine the scope and complexity of your localization and internationalization efforts. For example, you may need to adapt your application to different formats for dates, numbers, currencies, units, and symbols, as well as different cultural norms and preferences. You may also need to account for different text directions, such as left-to-right, right-to-left, or bidirectional, and different writing systems, such as alphabetic, syllabic, logographic, or abugida.

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Gennadiy Vaksman

Director, Engineering at TELUS Agriculture & Consumer Goods, 29K+ followers, 18,500,000 + views
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In my experience, designing applications for multiple languages and character sets begins with a clear definition of your target languages and regions. Identifying the specific languages your application will support and the corresponding regions helps lay the foundation for a successful multilingual design. Once the target languages are established, it's essential to consider various character sets and writing systems unique to each language. This includes accommodating diverse characters, symbols, and diacritics that may be utilized. A comprehensive understanding of linguistic nuances, cultural preferences, and regional variations is key to creating an inclusive and user-friendly application that seamlessly caters to a global audience.

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2 Choose appropriate encoding standards

The next step is to choose the encoding standards that will enable your application to store, process, and display the text in different languages and character sets. Encoding is the process of converting the characters into a sequence of bytes that can be transmitted and interpreted by computers. There are many encoding standards available, but the most widely used and recommended one is Unicode, which covers over 140,000 characters from more than 150 scripts and languages. Unicode supports several encoding forms, such as UTF-8, UTF-16, and UTF-32, which differ in the number of bytes used to represent each character. You should choose the encoding form that best suits your application's needs and compatibility.

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Gennadiy Vaksman

Director, Engineering at TELUS Agriculture & Consumer Goods, 29K+ followers, 18,500,000 + views
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One thing I've found helpful in designing applications for multiple languages and character sets is choosing appropriate encoding standards. The selection of encoding standards plays a crucial role in ensuring seamless communication and representation of diverse characters across different languages. By opting for standards such as UTF-8 or UTF-16, which support a broad range of characters, applications can effectively handle the complexities of various writing systems. This not only facilitates the display of text but also ensures accurate data storage and exchange, fostering a more inclusive user experience.

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3 Use external resources for localization

The third step is to use external resources for localization, which is the process of adapting your application's content and interface to a specific language and region. External resources are files that contain the localized text, images, audio, video, and other elements that vary according to the language and region. By using external resources, you can separate the localization from the core logic and functionality of your application, making it easier to maintain, update, and test. You can use various tools and frameworks to manage your external resources, such as resource bundles, properties files, XML files, or JSON files.

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Gennadiy Vaksman

Director, Engineering at TELUS Agriculture & Consumer Goods, 29K+ followers, 18,500,000 + views
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In my experience, designing applications for multiple languages and character sets involves strategic use of tools and frameworks to manage external resources effectively, and resource bundles emerge as invaluable assets in this endeavor. Leveraging tools like resource bundles allows for the organized storage of application resources such as strings, images, and other assets, tailored to different languages and regions. This not only streamlines the localization process but also facilitates easy updates and maintenance. By employing resource bundles, developers can modularize and centralize language-specific components, making it efficient to adapt and expand the application's language support.

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4 Implement internationalization best practices

The fourth step is to implement internationalization best practices, which are the principles and guidelines that help you design your application in a way that supports multiple languages and character sets. Internationalization is the process of making your application ready for localization by avoiding hard-coding any language-specific or region-specific elements, and using standard APIs and libraries that handle the differences in formats, collation, sorting, parsing, and validation. To ensure success, you should use placeholders and variables for dynamic text such as user input, dates, numbers or names. Additionally, you should use relative layouts and flexible sizes for user interface elements like buttons, labels or menus to accommodate different text lengths and directions. Furthermore, use Unicode-aware functions and methods for string manipulation, comparison and search to avoid errors or inconsistencies with different character sets. Additionally, locale-sensitive functions and methods should be used for formatting, parsing and validating dates, numbers, currencies, units and symbols to respect the user's preferences and expectations. Lastly, it is important to use appropriate fonts and styles for different scripts and languages to ensure readability and clarity.

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5 Test and review your application

The final step is to test and review your application in different languages and character sets, to ensure that it works correctly and smoothly, and that it meets the quality and usability standards. You should test your application on various devices, platforms, browsers, and screen resolutions, to check for any layout, alignment, or display issues. You should also test your application with different input methods, such as keyboards, touchscreens, or voice, to check for any input or output errors. You should also review your application with native speakers or professional translators, to check for any linguistic, cultural, or contextual errors or inaccuracies.

By following these steps and best practices, you can design applications that can support multiple languages and character sets, and that can provide a positive and engaging experience for your users around the world.

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6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?

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Mohsin Naeem

CEO Techtiz -Disruptive mobile apps
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To craft applications catering to multiple languages and character sets, the approach should integrate comprehensive internationalization principles into the design process as well as local contexts. Acknowledging nuances is pivotal. For example some Western languages may share similarities but , the dynamics shift significantly in regions where languages like Arabic are read from right to left. We go beyond mere translation, adapting UI elements to align with diverse cultural norms and interaction patterns. This approach ensures a holistic and user-centric application experience, transcending language barriers to foster inclusive usability. Extensive testing validates consistent user experiences across linguistic environments.

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How can you design applications for multiple languages and character sets?

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1 Define your target languages and regions

2 Choose appropriate encoding standards

3 Use external resources for localization

4 Implement internationalization best practices

5 Test and review your application

6 Here’s what else to consider

Application Development

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