Pseudolocalization
Encyclopedia
Pseudolocalization is a software testing
Software testing
Software testing is an investigation conducted to provide stakeholders with information about the quality of the product or service under test. Software testing can also provide an objective, independent view of the software to allow the business to appreciate and understand the risks of software...

 method that is used to test internationalization
Internationalization and localization
In computing, internationalization and localization are means of adapting computer software to different languages, regional differences and technical requirements of a target market...

 aspects of software. Specifically, it brings to light potential difficulties with localization by replacing localizable text (particularly in a graphical user interface
Graphical user interface
In computing, a graphical user interface is a type of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices with images rather than text commands. GUIs can be used in computers, hand-held devices such as MP3 players, portable media players or gaming devices, household appliances and...

) with text that imitates the most problematic characteristics of text from a wide variety of language
Language
Language may refer either to the specifically human capacity for acquiring and using complex systems of communication, or to a specific instance of such a system of complex communication...

s, and by forcing the application to deal with similar input text.

If used properly, it provides a cheap but effective sanity test
Sanity test
A sanity test or sanity check is a basic test to quickly evaluate whether a claim or the result of a calculation can possibly be true. It is a simple check to see if the produced material is rational...

 for localizability that can be helpful in the early stages of a software project.

Rationale

If software is not designed with localizability in mind, certain problems can occur when the software is localized. Text in a target language may tend to be significantly longer than the corresponding text in the original language of the program, causing the ends of text to be cut off if insufficient space is allocated. Words in a target language may be longer, causing awkward line breaks. In addition, individual characters in a target language may require more space, causing modified
Diacritic
A diacritic is a glyph added to a letter, or basic glyph. The term derives from the Greek διακριτικός . Diacritic is both an adjective and a noun, whereas diacritical is only an adjective. Some diacritical marks, such as the acute and grave are often called accents...

 characters to be cut off vertically, for example. Even worse, characters of a target language may fail to render properly (or at all) if support for an appropriate font is not included. (This is a larger problem for legacy software than for newer programs.) On the input side, programmers may make inappropriate assumptions about the form that user input can take.

Method

For small changes to mature software products, for which a large amount of target text is already available, directly testing several target languages may be the best option. For newer software (or for larger user-interface changes), however, waiting for text to be translated can introduce a significant lag into the testing schedule. In addition, it may not be cost-effective to translate UI text early in the development cycle, as it might change and need to be retranslated. Here, pseudolocalization can be the best option, as no real translation is needed.

Typically, pseudolocalized text (pseudo-translation) for a program will be generated and used as if it were for a real locale
Locale
In computing, locale is a set of parameters that defines the user's language, country and any special variant preferences that the user wants to see in their user interface...

. Pseudolocalized text should be longer than the original text (perhaps twice as long), contain longer unbroken strings of characters to test line breaking, and contain characters from different writing system
Writing system
A writing system is a symbolic system used to represent elements or statements expressible in language.-General properties:Writing systems are distinguished from other possible symbolic communication systems in that the reader must usually understand something of the associated spoken language to...

s. A tester will then inspect each element of the UI to make sure everything is displayed properly. To make it easier for the tester to find his or her way around the UI, the text may include the original text, or perhaps characters that look similar to the original text. For example, the string:

Edit program settings

might be replaced with:
[!!! εÐiţ Þr0ģЯãm səTτıИğ§ !!!]

The brackets on either side of the text helps to spot the following issues:
  • text that is cut off
  • concatenated strings
  • hard-coded strings


This type of transformation can be performed by a simple tool and does not require a human translator, resulting in time and cost savings.

Alternatively, a machine translation system
Machine translation
Machine translation, sometimes referred to by the abbreviation MT is a sub-field of computational linguistics that investigates the use of computer software to translate text or speech from one natural language to another.On a basic...

 can be used for automatically generating translated strings. This type of machine-generated pseudolocalization has the advantage of the translated strings featuring the characteristics specific to the target language and being available in real time at very low cost.

One approach to automatically generating translated strings is to add non-ASCII characters at the beginning and end of the existing text. This allows the existing text to still be read, but clearly identifies what text has been externalized and what text has not been externalized and exposes UI issues such as the need to accommodate longer text strings. This allows regular QA staff to test that the code has been properly internationalized.

Tools such as Alchemy Catalyst
Alchemy Catalyst
Alchemy CATALYST is a software Internationalization and localization suite which is developed by Alchemy Software Development Limited.-History:...

 from Alchemy Software Development and SDL Passolo
SDL Passolo
SDL Passolo is an award-winning specialised visual software localisation tool developed to enable the translation of user interfaces. They currently have a newly released 2009 version.-History:...

from SDL have advanced pseudo translation/localization capability including ability to view rendered Pseudolocalized dialog's and forms in the tools themselves for formats such as .net, wpf .rc .dll and .exe.
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