Putting the World into "World Wide Web" by Molly E. Holzschlag
Despite the fact that the Web has been international in scope from its inception, the predominant mass of Web sites are written in English or another left-to-right language. Sites are typically designed visually for Western culture, and rely on an enormous body of practices for usability, information architecture and interaction design that are by and large centric to the Western world.
There are certainly many reasons this is true, but as more and more Web sites realize the benefits of bringing their products and services to diverse, global markets, the more demand there will be on Web designers and developers to understand how to put the World into World Wide Web.
Internationalization
According to the W3C, Internationalization is:
“...the design and development of a product, application or document content that enables easy localization for target audiences that vary in culture, region, or language.”
Many Web designers and developers have at least heard, if not read, about Internationalization. We understand that the Web is in fact worldwide, but many of us never have the opportunity to work with Internationalization. Or, when we do, think of it in purely technical terms, such as “which character set do I use?”
At first glance, it might seem to many that Internationalization is the act of making Web sites available to international audiences. And while that is in fact true, this isn’t done by broad-stroking techniques and technologies. Instead, it involves a far more narrow understanding of geographical, cultural and linguistic differences in specific areas of the world. This is referred to as localization and is the act of making a Web site make sense in the context of the region, culture and language(s) the people using the site are most familiar with.
Internationalization itself includes the following technical tasks:
- Ensuring no barrier exists to the localization of sites. Of critical importance in the planning stages of a site for Internationalized audiences, the role of the developer is to ensure that no barrier exists. This means being able to perform such tasks as enabling Unicode and making sure legacy character encodings are properly handled.
- Preparing markup and CSS with Internationalization in mind. The earlier in the site development process this occurs, the better. Issues such as ensuring that you can support bidirectional text, identifying language, and using CSS to support non-Latin typographic features.
- Enabling code to support local, regional, language or culturally related references. Examples in this category would include time/date formats, localization of calendars, numbering systems, sorting of lists and managing international forms of addresses.
- Empowering the user. Sites must be architected so the user can easily choose or implement the localized alternative most appropriate to them.
Localization
According to the W3C, Localization is the:
...adaptation of a product, application or document content to meet the language, cultural and other requirements of a specific target market (a “locale”).
So here’s where we get down to thinking about the more sociological and anthropological concerns. Some of the primary localization issues are:
- Numeric formats. Different languages and cultures use numbering systems unlike ours. So, any time we need to use numbers, such as in an ordered list, we have to have a means of representing the accurate numbering system for the locale in question.
- Money, honey! That’s right. I’ve got a pocketful of ugly U.S. dollars (why is U.S. money so unimaginative?). But I also have a drawer full of Japanese Yen, Australian Dollars, and Great British Pounds. Currency, how it’s calculated and how it’s represented is always a consideration when dealing with localization.
- Using symbols, icons and colors properly. Using certain symbols or icons on sites where they might offend or confuse is certainly not in the best interest of a site that wants to sell or promote a product, service or information type. Moreover, the colors we use are surprisingly persuasive – or detrimental. Think about colors that represent death, for example. In many parts of Asia, white is the color of death. In most of the Western world, black represents death. For Catholic Europe, shades of purple (especially lavender) have represented Christ on the cross and mourning since at least Victorian times. When Walt Disney World Europe launched an ad campaign using a lot of purple and very glitzy imagery, millions of dollars were lost as a result of this seeming subtle issue. Instead of experiencing joy and celebration at the ads, the European audience, particularly the French, found the marketing to be overly American, aggressive, depressing and basically unappealing. Along with this and other cultural blunders, Disney Europe has become a well-known case study for businesses wishing to become international. By failing to understand localization differences, and how powerful color and imagery act on the human psyche, designers and developers are put to more of a disadvantage when attempting to communicate with a given culture.
- Choosing appropriate references to objects and ideas. What seems perfectly natural in one culture in terms of visual objects and ideas can get confused in another environment. One of my favorite cases of this has to do with Gerber baby food. In the U.S., the baby food is marketed using a cute baby on the package. Most people in the U.S. culturally do not make an immediate association that what is being represented on the label is what is inside the container. However, when Gerber expanded to Africa, where many people don’t read, and where visual associations are less abstract, people made the inference that a baby on the cover of a jar of food represented what is in fact in the jar. You can imagine how confused and even angry people became. Using such approaches as a marketing ploy in the wrong locale can and will render the marketing a failure.
As you can see, the act of localization is one that can have profound impact on the success of a business or organization as it seeks to become available to more and more people across the globe.
Rethinking Design in the Context of Culture
While well-educated designers and those individuals working specifically for companies that do a lot of localization understand these nuances, most of us don’t get exposed to these ideas. Yet, we begin to see how necessary it becomes to have an awareness of not just the technical aspects of Internationalization, but the socio-cultural ones within localization.
What’s more, the bulk of information we have when it comes to designing sites typically comes from studies and work done on sites built in English and promoted to Western culture at large. We’re making a critical mistake by not including diverse languages and cultural issues within our usability and information architecture studies.
Consider the following design from the BBC:
In this case, we’re dealing with English, which is read left to right. We are also dealing with U.K. cultural norms. Notice the following:
- Location of of navigation
- Use of the color red
- Use of diverse symbols
- Mix of symbols, icons and photos
- Location of Search
Now look at this design, which is the Arabic version of the BBC News, read right to left, and dealing with cultural norms within the Arabic-speaking world.
Notice the following:
- Location of of navigation (location switches to the right)
- Use of the color blue (blue is considered the “safest” global color)
- No use of symbols and icons whatsoever
- Limitation of imagery to photos
- In most cases, the photos show people, not objects
- Location of Search
Admittedly, some choices here are more obvious than others in terms of why they were made. But one thing that stands out is that the placement of search is the same for both versions. Is this the result of a specific localization decision, or based on what we believe about usability at large? This is exactly the kind of question that designers working on localization have to seek answers to, instead of relying on popular best practices and belief systems that exist for English-only Web sites.
It’s a Wide World Web After All
From this brief article on Internationalization, it becomes apparent that the art and science of creating sites for global audiences requires a lot more preparation and planning than one might think at first glance. Developers and designers not working to address these issues specifically due to time or awareness will do well to at least understand the basic process of making sites more culturally savvy, and better prepared for any future global expansion.
One thing is certain: We not only are on a dramatic learning curve for designing and developing Web sites as it is, the need to localize sites is going to become more and more a part of the day to day work. Understanding aspects of what makes a site international and local will not only help you expand your skill set and make you more marketable, but it will also expand your understanding of the world and the people within it, how they relate to and use the Web, and how you can help make their experience the best one possible.
About the author
Molly E. Holzschlag is a well-known Web standards advocate, instructor, and author. Among her thirty-plus books is the recent The Zen of CSS Design, co-authored with Dave Shea. The book artfully showcases the most progressive csszengarden.com designs. Molly is an invited expert to the Internationalization Activity GEO working group at the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and is Group Lead of the Web Standards Project (WaSP). A popular and colorful individual, you can catch up with Molly’s blog at, where else? http://molly.com/.
Your comments
Molly, I think you’ve touched on a subject that it alone stands by itself within web development. I can see how a web development company can spend all its time on just “Internationalizing”.
As for the masses, it’s been pushed aside (myself included) because we don’t care about any other audience then our own local environment.
You hit it right on when developers ask themselves “What character set do I use?” and that’s the extent of our work on internationalizing.
Color usage, component placement, photos…those are all super important and go beyond a developers scope. I’d be willing to say, developers just don’t know how to do that! By all means, you need a cultural anthropologist to nail that correctly.
Aside from the Yahoo! China deal that happened not too long ago (the story where we looked bad), The China Team has really been doing an excellent job on making Yahoo! an excellent portal to the web. They’ve done what it takes with many months and years of research and testing to make a good internationalized website. Hats off to them.
The BBC website as you’ve pointed out is also a great example. Just comparing the two next to each other shows that someone had Intl in mind.
Great thoughts Molly! I hope this topic goes beyond just the 9th day of advent
Thanks for bringing that to everones attention. I find it extremly difficult to get people to understand the concept, that other countries do things differently. I am a foreigner where I live and was brought up in a multicultural community back in my home country.
Now you would think that the differences between Germans and British are not that great, but they are very deepfounded. I am helping a few people at the moment to expand their market into Germany from here and it amaizes me how they want to apply British techniques to German people.
Just to illustrate one major difference (look out for the same in other countries too) Streetsigns in Germany tell you where to go. In Britain they tell you where not to go.
Not a big deal really, but it tells you of basic difference of how they were tought to think from an early age on.
A great primer about a really interesting, often overlooked subject.
The W3C definitions seem a bit long-winded though (W3C long-winded? Never!). Can’t we just say “Internationalisation” is “to make international,” which, in terms of web design, means making your content/design/etc. as usasble as possible for people from different nations?
But here’s a pedantic point – is “internationalisation” even the right term to use? We certainly should (and do, I think, hence the pedantry) read “international” as meaning “all encompassing” rather than the literal translation of the word. In this day and age countries, particularly in the “Western” world, are very multi-cultural – would multi-culturalisation be a more relevant term than internationalisation? As an example, the Arabic version of BBC News clearly isn’t aimed solely at people who live in (or are even from) Arabic-speaking nations.
On a personal note, the thing I find most interesting about internationalisation isn’t so much language, or even design issues, but content. Most of the things I read on the web are USA-centric (and, I’m sorry to say it, it seems to me that American writers tend to be less internationally-aware (or accommodating?) than those from elsewhere). Expecting someone to know about this or that is often taken for granted, especially if it is firmly entrenched in a person’s culture, which is, quite understandably, subjective. I was listening to an American podcast this morning in which the DJ was relating a point to an American TV show which I had never heard of, let alone seen, and therefore, being a born and bred Brit, I didn’t understand her point. One of the great things about the interweb is that we can reach an international audience, but it can be difficult to shake off our own cultural, national, and even regional familiarities and assumptions – and there are inevitably lots of them (and it’s great that there are so many cultural idiosyncrasies around the world, right?).
Great post Molly.
I see the last 2 points “Using symbols, icons and colors properly” and “Choosing appropriate references to objects and ideas” are very important and brilliant points.
Thank you Molly and Thank you all guys.
There is a video icon at the top of the left most column in the arabic site image as well as symbols for pictures, video and also popup content.
As you explore the site, the use of symbols and icons also increases, I imagine the lack of the world graphic from the former image is probably a result of the prior localisation choice.
At the time of writing, there is certainly an increased use in symbols on the site.
Thank you for highlighting this area of development, it is certainly an important one for sites with an multinational audience.
I put the world into equilibriarte.org: thanks to server-side programming, users can select and change the language from each page.
At the first visit the browser language is recognized and the site is shown in that language, if it’s available; if it’s not, english is default.
Numbers too, of course, are formatted according to local systems.
But I made a big design mistake which gives problems sometimes: I used local encoding for each language instead of Unicode for all; to fix this now would mean to encode all the texts published by users into databases…
So, if you design something similar use UTF-8 encoding!
Important stuff. However I believe that as a person (or designer) of western upbringing it is impossible to see the sites like somebody from another culture would see them. A great internationalization needs people with different backgrounds. I always found it fascinating how the most popular Chinese sites (sina.com.cn, sohu.com for example) look really cluttered and lack of white space in my eyes, though guessing from the popularity the Chinese crowd finds them nice.
@ Mr. Khmerang: You are exactly right, I know some Chinese and Korean students who have told me that those kinds of sites are exactly what works with them. I think that the only way to do localization is to get the help of someone who understands the culture you are designing for. Assuming that the standards of Western design apply everywhere else is a big mistake.
Something I’m interested in is techniques for serving up text in multiple languages. As in, rather than just publishing multiple copies of the same page. If anyone has examples of doing this with a database or otherwise, let me know.
I’m going through this at the moment by waiting for my W3C Internationalisation Membership to be excepted and also following the issues mentioned above as I’m creating English and Chinese sites from one template.
Hope something can be brought out to help us soon.
Also I agree with the comment about Sina and other Chinese sites!
When dealing with internationalization, it’s also important to know which things DON’T get translated, like some brand-related words (usually company name, sometimes product names): In the above example, obviously, “BBC” remains unchanged.
Interesting, though, that the tab labels did not get translated.
I also noticed after viewing the source code on the Arabic BBC site they are using a mix of english and arabic words in the meta name keywords any idea why?
Useful to bring the cultural aspects of international design to the fore: embarrassing cross-border gaffes made by big-name brands have passed into folklore. I’d not noticed the contrasts within the BBC’s family of sites before, or at any rate that they had cultural significance.
One thing important to note is that there are really no hard and fast rules here: the audiences of different sites will have different mixes of cultures, and to apply a lowest common denominator to them all is safest but often means throwing the baby out with the bath-water e.g: scrapping iconic visual shortcuts, even though your site’s particular mix of cultures could happily accept some carefully chosen pictorial icons; or using blue for all your livery and making bits of the site difficult to differentiate.
As Mr. Khmerang might be implying, should this be considered a component of usability testing? For a site to consider itself truly international, should its testers be taken from a multiplicity of cultures? More radically, should its coders and designers be chosen on that basis, given that the earliest you can consider these things, the easier it would be to implement them? (Can that be even done, given employment and discrimination law?)
Yes like many I’ve run across this and then later dropped the ball. I did some work for a Japanese NPO for free last year but the complexity of internationalization was far more intensive than I’d first imagined. Much much more than the character set in fact. And beyond the technical you have the whole cultural divide to at least consider.
But the fact it is a World Wide Web and no longer can we think of it as American dominated. We need to be considering the customer in China and Eastern Europe and Beirut as well as the local market – who may still be non-english speaking by the way. In my opinion this is the unsung frontier of accessibility we’re talking about here. The challenge for anyone who wants to make money in the future might just be how well we can deliver this solution to international audiences.
Nice article Molly.
for CHRISTIAN MONTOYA:
If you use a server-side language, such as PHP pr ASP, you can store all the words, phrases and sentences in dedicated files, one for each language.
Then the real pages simply contain the variable names.
For example, we’ve 3 files
1 ‘it.php’ with the following variable: $greet=”ciao”;
2 ‘fr.php’ with $greet=”salut”;
3 ‘en.php’ with $greet=”hello”;
And the page index.php only contains the variable name $greet. The right lang file is loaded according to the language selected by the user.
That’s the system I use on my portal (the code is open source; you can study it and use it).
I hope this helped
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