According to the Localization Institute, localization is the process of creating or adapting a product to a specific locale, i.e., to the language, cultural context, conventions and market requirements of a specific target market. With a properly localized product, a user can interact with this product using his/her own language and cultural conventions. It also means that all user-visible messages and all user documentation (printed and electronic) use the language and cultural conventions of the user. Finally, the properly localized product meets all regulatory and other requirements of the user’s country/region.

Internationalization is a way of designing and producing products that can be easily adapted to different locales. This requires extracting all language, country/region and culturally dependent elements from a product. In other words, the process of developing an application whose feature design and code design do not make assumptions based on a single locale, and whose source code simplifies the creation of different local editions of a program, is called internationalization.

What is an example of localization and internationalization?

Localization and internationalization are often used interchangeably. The definitions provided above with reference to software development clearly show the distinction. In terms of FOSS development, an excellent example of both ‘internationalization’ and ‘localization’ is the Mozilla Project. Mozilla is the most well known and widely used of the FOSS web browsers available. Mozilla is internationalized because the community of developers behind the Mozilla Project have designed and developed their software to function in multiple locales. Mozilla is localized when local developers, using guidelines and localization toolkits provided by the Mozilla Project, modify or adapt the product to suit a particular locale. This modification often involves translating user interfaces, documentation and packaging, as well as changing and customizing features to match the usage patterns of that locale.

Internationalization and localization of Mozilla by anyone is possible because it is a FOSS project. The Mozilla source code is distributed under the Mozilla Public License (MPL), which is a license that is based on and approved by the Open Source Initiative. The Mozilla Project aims to serve the greater Internet community, which it recognizes as a global community made up of users belonging to a great array of language groups. One of the goals of the Mozilla Project is to “advocate the localization of mozilla.org products into any world language”.

Fully localized versions of Mozilla cover 34 different languages. Localization efforts are still continuing for most of the other languages .