¿Habla Español?

Does your app / product need to support multiple languages? Do you need to support things like bi-directional text (right to left and left to right) or non-western characters such as Chinese?

Before you answer that, stop and think. If you’re a US-centric product, your first instinct is probably no. Everyone speaks English, right? Wrong.

There’s a process in software development called internationalization and localization. These are big words that basically mean “getting your product ready for other countries and cultures.” The big companies (like Google, Facebook, etc.) all have support for internationalization and localization. They probably started out that way, or if they didn’t, they started supporting it very early on. They anticipated being a global brand from the beginning.

Anymore, it’s almost certain that your product, if you have any level of success, is going to have to support multiple languages at the very least. Is it better to do it when it’s needed or plan for it early?

As you know, I’m normally a huge fan of not building anything until you need it. This is an exception. The cost of including support for internationalization and localization in the beginning is very low. Every major language has built-in capabilities that make support easy, even if you only use one language for the first three years you’re in business.

If you wait, you will almost certainly have a mountain of work to retrofit your application later. Why? Because your developers won’t be thinking about it and will hardwire every part of your application for your native language.  You have to touch every screen, every label, every single part of your system. It’s no fun and almost always induces bugs and hatred from users.

Just Remember

Internationalization and localization should be thought of as a requirement for your application out of the gate. Most languages and platforms come with support built in that make this process relatively simple in the early going. Retrofitting your application later is very expensive, time-consuming and will make you angry.

Plan for it today, even if you don’t implement all of it today.

Your Assignment

Walk into your next meeting with your dev team and ask a simple question: “We have a customer who asked if we could support Spanish (or your other language here) on our screens?”

If everyone looks the other way or down at their screens, you’ve got work to do. If the answer is “Yes, we just have to build out the language dictionaries for Spanish”, you need to buy everyone dinner tonight. A nice dinner.