Oracle PL/SQL Programming, 5th Edition

Overview and Terminology

Before I proceed, let’s get some terminology straight. Globalization, internationalization, and localization are often used interchangeably, yet they actually have very different meanings. Table 25-1 defines each and explains how they are related.

Table 25-1. Fundamental terms and abbreviation

Term	Abbreviation	Definition
Globalization	g11n	Application development strategy focused on making applications multilingual and locale-independent. Globalization is accomplished through internationalization and localization.
Internationalization	i18n	The design or modification of an application to work with multiple locales.
Localization	l10n	The process of actually making an application work in each specific locale. l10n includes text translation. It is made easier with a proper i18n implementation.

Warning

If you haven’t seen the abbreviations mentioned in Table 25-1 before, you may be confused about the numbers sandwiched between the two letters. These terms are often abbreviated by including the first letter and last letter, with the number of characters between them in the middle. Globalization, for example, has 11 letters between the “g” and the “n,” making the abbreviation g11n.

It is true that Oracle supports localization to every region of the world. I have heard it suggested, though, that Oracle’s localization support means that you can load English data and search it in Japanese. Not true! Oracle does not have a built-in linguistic translation engine that performs translations ...