Taking on the World Is your site ready for I18N?

摘要

The Web has certainly made the world smaller. International business and communications have become easier than ever. Your Web site probably attracts a certain number of overseas visitors effortlessly. Thus, it's only natural to consider attracting even more international customers by making your Web site multilingual and multicultural. If you believe what development tool vendors tell you, this is no big deal. After all, your favorite tool probably supports Unicode. Just have someone translate the strings in your application and you're all set-right? Unfortunately, the reality of handling multiple languages is far more complicated. Because I live in the United States and my Web site is written in English, my focus is on moving from the U.S. variant of English to other languages. However, the same problems occur when you're moving between any two languages.