HTML, XHTML, and CSS Bible, Fifth Edition

Chapter 15. Internationalization and Localization

IN THIS CHAPTER

• Internationalization and Localization

• Translating Your Web Site

• Understanding Unicode

Even though this book is written in English, chances are good it will be translated into other languages. From a website perspective, if your site is only in English, you may eliminate a huge portion of your potential world audience. This chapter takes a look at some options for improving your documents' access to the world's population.

Note

The terms Internationalization and Localization are often used interchangeably. To Internationalize an online document refers to making it more suitable to a global audience, while Localizing an online document refers to making the document suitable for one particular locale. In this chapter we deal with the latter.

Internationalization and Localization

Only a small percentage of the world's population uses English as a first language. If you anticipate a wide range of international visitors to your site, then you should consider localizing your site.

Localization is the process of creating different sites for each language you intend to support. By creating documents in Japanese, Chinese, German, French, and Spanish, for example, you vastly increase the size of your potential audience.

The actual implementation of localization can be very straightforward: create different URL "branches" for your site, one branch for each language. For example, if you need to support English, German, and Japanese, your ...