Speak your users’ language: what to look out for when going global
summary
Nine concrete gotchas: prefer ISO 8601 date strings and use locale-aware formatters; display currencies with explicit currency codes and use PHP NumberFormatter/Collator or ICU for localized numbers, currencies and sorting; handle grammatical number beyond singular/plural (Arabic needs many forms); use named variables for localization so word order and reuse work; provide translation context and screenshots; expect much longer or denser translations (German, Chinese); don’t assume one-name, fixed-case, ASCII-only personal names.
AI-written summary · about
chapters (11)
- 0:00Globalizing your app
- 4:16Internationalization vs localization
- 8:33Date formats across regions
- 12:50Currency display pitfalls
- 18:55Emojis and symbols globally
- 25:41Word order in translations
- 30:50Context in translation
- 35:50Word length and design
- 41:10Sorting in global apps
- 44:50Global name handling
- 56:11Summary and resources
related talks
27mSpeak your users' language: what to look out for when going global
22mInternationalisation(i18n) & Localisation(l10n)
48mCollecting information with care
17mAvoiding the culture shock:Making your app internationalized
38mThe First Contact
27mRight-to-Left, Left-to-Right: Rethinking Multilingual Design
58mAround world in a session! Globalization and localization of software
41mDesigning for Your International Audiences