Internationalization and localization

lastmod 2025-12-26created 2015-05-0615 edits

Internationalization and localization refer to supporting products such as publications, hardware, or software so that they can be used in various environments with different languages and cultures. Here, internationalization means designing the product itself so that it can support multiple environments, and localization means supporting the product for each environment.

Internationalization is sometimes written as I18N or i18n, and localization as L10N or l10n. These represent the letters of each English word, excluding the first and last letters, by their count. (I18N means 'I' + 18 letters + 'N') Because lowercase L and uppercase I look similar, i18n and L10n are commonly used. The term multilingualization (m17n) is also sometimes used.

The Translate Toolkit

• The Translate Toolkit
• Essential Toolkit for Localization Engineers

The localization engineers Swiss Army Knife. Use it to convert, count, manipulate, review and debug texts. Tools that you can expand, adapt and grow.

Linux Korean language settings

• Arch Linux Korean environment setup
• Localization (Korean)/Korean (Korean) - ArchWiki

Input method

• See IME.

Projects

• gettext (po file)
• wxLocale
• Boost:Locale
• Vue I18n (vue-i18n)
• i18next
• react-i18next (react)
• next-i18next (nextjs)
• i18next-browser-languagedetector
• Weblate - Weblate is an open source web-based translation tool with version control.
• Localization-CLI - CLI tool that automatically translates iOS localization files with multiple AIs

See also

• clocale
• Unicode
• ICU
• CLDR
• iconv
• UTF8-CPP
• Weblate
• Time zone

Favorite site

• Wikipedia (en) description of internationalization and localization
• KLDP: Locales mini-HOWTO
• Google Developers: Internationalization (i18n) open source libraries and APIs
• Stackoverflow: Resources for I18N in C++
• Oracle: International Language Environments Guide: Code Set Conversion
• Internationalization (i18n) automation guide