Multiculturality & internationalization

MULTICULTURALITY &
INTERNATIONALIZATION
Grau en Enginyeria Informàtica
User Centred Design

Index
• Internationalization and localization
• Culture
• User Interface elements
• Writing
• Codification schemes
• Internationalization and localization model
• Technical guide
• Cultural Models
• Examples
Multiculturality & Internationalization - User Centred Design 2 / 92

Some Concepts
• Internationalization and localization.
• Elements and international symbols.
• Culture: concepts, cultural elements, cultural levels,
cultural representations.
• Understand meanings of colours, icons, numbers,
currency representation, numerals, currency, writing,
etc.

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.
• Internationalization
• the process of designing a software application so that it can
potentially be adapted to various languages and regions without
engineering changes.
• Localization
• the process of adapting internationalized software for a specific region
or language by adding locale-specific components and translating text.
• Localization (which is potentially performed multiple times, for
different locales) uses the infrastructure or flexibility provided
by internationalization (which is ideally performed only once, or
as an integral part of ongoing development).

Internationalization and localization
• The internationalization and localization process
Multiculturality & Internationalization - User Centred Design
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intern
ationalization_and_localization
5 / 92

Internationalization
• Internationalized Software: product prepared to be used
out of the region was conceived for.
• Goal: to reach international markets
• Problem: adjust the interface to different places
• Extreme cases: web sites

Internationalization
• Example: writing direction
Washing machine instructions from left to rigth vs from rigth to left
7 / 92

vsInternationalization
• Process of designing a
software application so that
it can be adapted to various
languages and regions
without engineering
changes.
• An internationalized software
does not have elements
related to language or culture
in the code.
• Textual elements like
messages or labels are
outside of the code and they
are included in a dynamic way
Localization
• Process of adapting
internationalized
software for a specific
region or language by
adding locale-specific
components and
translating text
• Local conventions, culture
and language of a particular
region.
• Set of characters used to
write in a language (writing).
Advantages
• The same program works in the whole world
• Low cost codification
8 / 92

Culture
“A way of life, the sum total of one’s philosophy, beliefs, norms, values,
morals, habits, customs, arts and literature…” Thomas Vulpe.

Culture
• Culture is taken for granted. There is no exhaustive
definition for culture.
• Culture is no limited to national cultures.
• Culture does not exist at national level only.
• At least we should avoid assuming that there is one national culture
for every country.
• The culture of a region or country can perceive the same
object in different ways.
• Example
• “As soon as possible”
• means immediately in US, and
• could be during this month in Latin-American culture

Culture
• A shared understanding
about the world works
• Shared patterns of behavior
with shared meaning
Ways of
behaving
Ways of thinking
Ways of feeling
That are
learned, shared,
transmitted and
forgotten

Culture
Consciousness
Folklore Grammar
Literature Theatre Art
Music Dance Food Clothing/costume
Postures/attitudes Politeness concepts of propriety
Representations of Beauty Grammatical functions
Raising / educating children “Going about” (Umgang) with other human beings
“Going about” with animals attitudes/postures towards nature hierarchical relationships
Cleanliness representations disease representations historical understanding
Values
Concepts of Virtues, Mistakes, Sins Linguistic interaction and discourse roles
Leadership qualities goal orientation industriousness attitudes towards work
Concepts of order Truth Sense of Justice concepts of time / space

Culture
• Learned but
• We don’t know what we know
• We don’t know what we don’t know
• Communication provides shared understanding
• Without an effective
communication there
is no culture and
intercultural communication

Culture: Global Design
• What is for?

Culture: Global Design
• Send a letter

Culture: Global Design (global Signs)

Culture
• Take care how to draw men and women together and how
they are dressed
• Some symbols such as the swastika, hammer and sickle,
rising sun, crosses and stars represent political and/or
religious beliefs
• What in a fundamentalist country can be understood as
offensive, in the West may have no meaning
• Moving head, say good-bye, women in bikinis, alcohol

Cultural markers
• Text
• Icons
• Audio clips
• Currency
• Date/time format,
numbers
• Spelling
• Weights and measures
• Colours
• Graphics
• Telephone numbers
• Address
• Titles

Index
• Culture
• Writing
• Localization model
• Technical guide
• Cultural Models
• Examples

Icons
• Usually, icons have a deep language and/or culture
dependence
• Examples:
• Mail box
• spelling checker acceptance (tick)

Colours
• They have associated meanings through the tradition in most
cultures
• Occidental
• BLACK: colour associated with mourning and funerals
: associated with marriage and birth
• Oriental
: associated with mourning
• RED: associated with marriage
• Each culture has its standards, then, it’s difficult to generalize
• Example: traffic lights
• RED (stop), (caution) and GREEN (go)
• Even it seems to be standard, this cannot be globally assumed (China
standard: Blue/ : Cross).
colour Symbolism Chart by Culture
Understand the Meanings of colour in Various Cultures Around the World
http://webdesign.about.com/od/color/a/bl_colorculture.htm
22 / 92

Cultural Meanings of Colour and Colour
Symbolism
• By mixing appropriate amounts of
different colours however you can
often neutralize inherent negative
cultural connotations.
• However
• Times change and old associations may
be slowly altered over the years.
• Western cultures have adopted some
Eastern colour uses while some Eastern
cultures have adopted Western ideas.
• The Internet has allowed people to learn
about other cultures and to adopt what
them like from these cultures.
http://www.empower-yourself-with-color-
psychology.com/cultural-color.html
Cultural colour Meanings of Orange
Western:
• affordable or inexpensive items
• Halloween, combined with black
Eastern:
• happiness
• spirituality
Thailand:
• colour for Thursday
Ireland:
• religious colour for Protestants
• appears on the Irish flag along with
white for peace and green for Catholics
Netherlands:
• colour of the Dutch Royal Family
Hinduism:
• Saffron, a soft orange colour, is
considered an auspicious and sacred
colour
23 / 92

http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/vis
ualizations/colours-in-cultures
24 / 92

http://blog.kissmetrics.com/color-psychology/?wide=1
25 / 92

Calendars, dates and hours
• There are more calendars than Gregorian !!
• Buddhist, Islamic, Chinese, Hebrew, etc.
• Even in one calendar, there are different formats:
• dd/mm/aaaa 11 de Enero de 2005
• mm/dd/yyyy January the 11th, 2005

Calendars, dates and hours
• in some countries the date format is
day/month/year (e.g. the UK), whilst in
others month/day/year (e.g. the USA)
is the norm.
• In addition, some countries treat
Sunday as the first day of the week,
whilst others traditionally view Monday
as the start of the week.
• Calendars must reflect these
variations to prevent erroneous date
selections.
• Therefore, cultural differences must
be taken into consideration when
designing event calendars as
incorrect choices could lead to big
problems, such as appearing at the
airport on the wrong day.

Numbers, currencies and units of
measure
• For each country we need to note the currency symbol
and numeric format
• USA $ 1,234.56
• UK £ 1,234.56
• Euro 1.234,56 €
• Most of the world uses the metric system
• BUT United States or UK
• Use miles (1.609 m), inches (2,54 cm), ...

Sorting
• Order forms are important in the process of
internationalization and are a complex issue
• Initially ordinations of characters are A through Z,
uppercase first, then lowercase, and numbers are
arranged in 0-9
• This type of rule is not always acceptable, because there
are rules more complicated when a second character
must be considered.
• Example: ‘CH’ and ‘LL’ in Spanish
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alphabetical_order
• Guidelines for Alphabetical Arrangement of Letters and Sorting of Numerals and
Other Symbols (National Information Standards Organization - American National
Standards Institute, ANSI): http://www.niso.org/publications/tr/tr03.pdf
29 / 92

Index
• Culture
• Writing
• Technical guide
• Cultural Models
• Examples

Alphabet
• Classified into ideograms and phonetic scripts
• An ideogram has special meaning and is not related to its
pronunciation
• The letters of a phonetic script represent certain sounds
• The most important alphabets are:
• Western (Latin, Greek, Cyrillic)
• Arabic or Middle Eastern
• East Extreme

Western alphabet
• Latin, Greek and Cyrillic
• Common characteristics:
• Phonetics
• Left to right
• Use upper and lower case
• Numbers in Arabic format: 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8 y 9 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin_alphabet

Arabic
• There are no distinct upper and lower case letter forms
• Alphabetical order two different ways:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_alphabet#Computers_and_th
e_Arabic_alphabet
33 / 92

East Extreme
• Based on chinesse ideografic characters
• Currently are used a lot of characters
standard:
20.000 characters
extended:
50.000 characters
Minimun to talk:
3.000 characters

Fonts
• Culture impacts your
preference for fonts
• One explanation for why some fonts make you feel in a
certain way is because of deep links to culture.
• Many people relate Helvetica with the US Government
because it’s used in tax forms.
• These associations are difficult to remove and should be
considered when deciding on a font choice.
Because fonts are designed by humans, there is
usually some meaning attached to them. You don’t
want to choose a font that is easily associated with
something in our culture that’s markedly different
than the vibe you’re trying to give off.
https://medium.com/who-what-why/1523564d966c
35 / 92

Translation
• All languages have different syntax and grammar
• The translated text could change of size, so its is neccesary to
consider this aspect
• Example:
• Move (in English) its translated as verschieben (in German)
• To be considered in:
• Messages
• Grammar and syntax
• Menus design
• Prompts
• dialogue boxes
• Icons
4char vs 11char
36 / 92

Index
• Culture
• Writing
• Technical guide
• Cultural Models
• Examples

Coding Schemes
• Each type of writing has to be represented in
computer systems
• This representation takes the form of a
coding scheme
• These schemes are encrypted through
character mapping
• Character maps allow the representation of
scripts in the computer and include characters
that are not in the alphabet and punctuation
• Types of schemes
• ASCII
• Map one byte character (SBCS)
• Map double byte characters (DBCS)
• Unicode

ASCII
• American Standard Code for Information Interchange
• Based on the English alphabet that encodes 128
specified characters
• numbers 0-9, letters a-z and A-Z
• some basic punctuation symbols, some control codes (originated
with Teletype machines), and a blank space - into the 7-bit binary
integers
• Each character is indexed in the character map
• Ex.: number 65 = ‘A’ and number 97 = ‘a’
• ASCII was the most commonly used character encoding
on the World Wide Web until December 2007, when it
was surpassed by the ASCII-derived UTF-8
http://www.w3schools.com/tags/ref_ascii.asp
39 / 92

ASCII
ISO Character Sets
40 / 92

ASCII ISO 8859-1 (Latin-1)

ASCII ISO 8879

Problems
• Duplicity in the character encoding
• Inconsistent characters codes due to national and
industry standards conflicts.
• 7-bit ASCII & 8-bit ASCII codes are limited to 128 & 256
positions  not useful for a global/wide context
• Internet has “complicated” this situation: it demands for a
unique set of characters in the world

Unicode
enables people around the world to use computers in any language
• Because the previous character-sets are limited in size,
and are not compatible in multilingual environments,
the Unicode Consortium developed the Unicode
Standard.
• Unicode Standard
• covers all the characters, punctuations, and symbols in the
world.
• enables processing, storage and interchange of text data no
matter what the platform, no matter what the program, no
matter what the language
• Industry consensus
• Apple, Borland, Digital, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Lotus, Metaphor,
Microsoft, Next, Novell, Research Libraries Group, Sun,
WordPerfect, Xerox
http://www.unicode.org
44 / 92

Unicode

Unicode
• Universal (wide capacity)
• Fixed width
• Not ambiguous
• Capacity: more than 39.000 characters

UTF-8
• Can represent every character in the Unicode character
set
• Designed for backward compatibility with ASCII
• Dominant character encoding for the World Wide Web
• Recommended by the Internet Mail Consortium (IMC) for
all e-mail programs (display and create mails)
• Increasingly being used as the default character encoding
in operating systems, programming languages, APIs, and
software applications

KANJI
• Defined by el JIS (Japan Industry Standard)
• Level 1  3.000 characters
• Level 2 adds 3.500 characters
• Level 3, recently defined. It increments the map with more than
6.000 characters
• Based in a 7-bit format. Requires special ESCAPE
sequences

April 2015: Support for utf8mb4
The character encoding of the database has
changed from UTF8 to UTF8mb4, this adds a
wide range of 4-byte characters set.
50 / 92

Index
• HCI and culture
• Writing
• Technical guide
• Cultural Models
• Examples

Localization Model
Localized
resources +
Application
Code =
Localized
Product
• Contain data but not code
• Contain string of characters
and graphics used in the
interfaces
• Contain specific elements of
localization
• Contain application
code that is
executed in all
countries and
languages
• Key points for designing a localized product:
• Place all data, text, graphics and multimedia in a separate data file
(o several files)
• Organize and document files
• Create a process to build the localized product
52 / 92

Localization Model
• Some examples

Localization Model
• Key points for designing a localized product:
• Place all data, text, graphics and multimedia in a separate data
file (o several files)
• Organize and document files
• Create a process to build the localized product

Index
• HCI and culture
• Writing
• Technical guide
• Cultural Models
• Examples

Technical guide. Points to Revise
• Specific localization elements
• Convention text processing:
• sorting, character classification, pronunciation, hyphenation,
character-chains management functions and exchanging
information files
• Inputs management
• keyboard driver support and other input methods
• Outputs management
• Ex. Translating Text: every language has different grammar and
syntax
• Translated text is resized, growing must be expected
• Move (in English) = Verschieben (in German) [4 against 11]

Technical guide. Be aware of
• Messages
• Grammar and syntaxes
• Design of menus
• Prompts
• State Bars
• dialogue boxes
• Icons

Technical guide. Dialogues organization
• Organization of controls and window elements should
consider text of labels growth
• In Hebrew and Arabic, the information is written from right
to left (take care of text presentation)
• Some languages include diacritical marks that require
additional space
• Rule: allow 30% of growth

Technical guide. State Bars and Menus
• State Bars
• Do not fill all the bar with text
• English version should occupy 50% of bar space
• Menus
• Avoid dense menus
• Accelerator keys coincide with the first character of a word. This
can cause problems when translating.

Technical guide. Cultural elements
• ZIP code
• Solution
Allow flexibility

Technical guide. Programming
• Document ALL the resources hat must be localized
• It is useful to develop two locations in parallel in order to
evaluate the internationalization
• It is important to have tools and utilities to make the
location
• Ex.: java language
• Supports Unicode:
• It has a 16-bit char type (in C + + is platform dependent)
• It has a notation for defining a Unicode character constant ' uxxxx'
• It has predefined objects
• Extends Object Class java.util.Locale. A Locale object represents a
handle to a region

http://www.w3.org/International
Internationalization Quick Tips for the Web: http://www.w3.org/International/quicktips/Overview
63 / 92

Index
• HCI and culture
• Writing
• Technical guide
• Cultural Models
• Examples

Cultural Models
• Edward Hall: Determine to send the correct answer more than
send the correct message.
• Victor David: Determine the cultural aspects could be easily
used in a communication in business scenarios.
• Geert Hofstede: Determine thinking patterns, feeling and
attitude convey the mental culture.
• Trompenaars: Determine the way people resolve their
problems.
• A cultural model could be used to
• identify global information (relevant information in some contexts
without modifications)
• identify effective cultural metaphors
• avoid some mistakes (that could be offensive in some cultures)
• evaluate effectiveness of an interface used by an international user.

Hofstede Model
• Collectivism vs. Individualism
• the relationship between the individual and the
collective/group which prevails in a given society
• Collectivism: Korea, Japan, Brazil
• Individualism: USA, France, Germany, Costa Rica.

Hofstede Model
• Feminity vs. Masculinity
• predominant socialisation pattern is for men to be more assertive
and for women to be more nurturing
• work goals indicated a near consistency on men scoring
advancement and earnings as more important, and
• women scoring supervision, social aspects of the job, working
conditions, working hours and ease of work as more important.
• Hofstede calculated scores of Masculinity/Femininity that are
available for a small group of nations
• Masculinity: USA, Japan, Germany
• Feminity: Costa Rica, Denmark, Norway

Index
• HCI and culture
• Writing
• Technical guide
• Cultural Models
• Examples

Some examples
Individualism - Switzerland
“You’re immediately at the centre of attention - your individuality, your everyday life,
situations in which you recognize yourself and where you would like to see yourself.”
http://www.mcdonalds.ch
69 / 92

Some examples
Individualism – Germany, Switzerland

Some examples
Colectivism - India

Some examples
Colectivism - Japan

Design for China
• China – websites are more complex, more oriented
towards entertainment (high context / collectivist)
 more complex because of
1. Principle: “give the people what they want at once”
“…clearness and transparency in Chinese not only means, to ‘get an
overview’ but also means ‘to find quickly what one is looking for’.
In contrast to western website that are characterized by a deep
hierarchy and fewer elements on each level, Chinese websites have a
flat hierarchy with as many elements on each level as possible.

Designing for China
 more complex because of
2. “aesthetics of abundance” –Chinese popular culture, e.g., in New
Year’s pictures, calendars, paintings. “…strong and rich colour,
density, and opulent presentation symbolize happiness and
wealth.”
3. search patterns:
• mainland Chinese prefer vertical layout
• Hong Kong Chinese prefer horizontal

China vs USA

Yahoo! US
Caract. Principales
Web Site Directory
(14 Temas principales)
Noticias
Yahoo! Worldwide
Búsqueda
Overview: Yahoo! Services
Caract. Principales
Overview: Yahoo! Services
Web Site Directory
(14 temas principales)
Noticias
Entretenimiento
Búsqueda
Yahoo! Worldwide
Servicios SMS
Deportes:
Liga China de Fútbol
Advertisement
Musica & Email
Películas
Headlines
Wallpaper
Downloads
Películas
Compras
Sección miembros
Yahoo!
Announcement
US Local Yahoo!
Search Field (2)
Other Yahoo! Services
Multiculturality & Internationalization - User Centred DesignYahoo! China 76 / 92

Examples – BMW

Examples – BMW
Argentinan Web of BMW does not use correctly the verbal times or the tone typic
of Argentina, the web page uses the typica spanish style:: Mantenga el control
(Maintain the control)..., Manténgase seguro (maintain safe)...

Examples – Use of colour

Examples – Individualism Vs. Colectivism

Nescafe (may ‘14)
Japan: http://nestle.jp Italy: https://www.nescafe.it/home
82 / 92

Nintendo (May ‘15)
Japan: http://www.nintendo.co.jp Spain: http://www.nintendo.es
83 / 92

Nescafe (may ‘14)
France India: http://www.nestle.in/brands/beverages
http://www.croquonslavie.fr/corner-
marque/nescafe/Pages/Homenescafe.aspx?hbxCm
p=TD_NESCAFE
84 / 92

EEUU web site
Data format NOT consistent
dd:mm:aaaa instead of mm:dd:aaa
Measures
American format
US dollars
Miles and Galons
Colours
In US RED and GREY are related
with necessity and luxury
Colectivism
85 / 92

Brazil web site
Colours
Luxury referred with càlid
colours and expensive elements
(Chinese porcelain vase)
Colectivism or Individualism
undefined
86 / 92

Russia web site
Menus and colours
Simple and Austere
Alphabet
cyrillic
(some) Conclusions
• High localization (a different
scheme for every country
even Brazil and Portugal
different pages)
• Japan very similar to EEUU
87 / 92

Examples – Writing

Examples - Writing

Conclusions
• Computerized market is global, in that way it is necessary
to design for the whole world
• Internationalization is a necessity not an option
• It is precise to consider it at the early design

Interesting readings
• Cross cultural considerations for user interface
design, by Nehal Shah, April, 2013:
• http://www.humanfactors.com/coolstuff/cross-cultural-
considerations-for-user-interface-design.asp
• The future of global user experience in local contexts,
by Apala Lahiri Chavan, February 2013:
• http://www.humanfactors.com/coolstuff/the-future-of-global-user-
experience-in-local-contexts.asp
• International Usability: Big Stuff the Same, Details Differ,
by Jakob Nielsen, 2011:
• http://www.nngroup.com/articles/international-usability-details-differ
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internationalization_and_locali
zation

Bibliography
• Bucher, Hans-Jürgen. (2002). The power of the audience: Interculturality, interactivity and trust in
Internet Communication. In F. Sudweeks and C. Ess (eds.), Cultural Attitudes towards Technology and
Communication. Proc. Third International Conference. Montreal, CanadaMurdoch University Press.
• Duncker, Elke. (2002). Cross-cultural usability of computing metaphors: Do we colonize the minds of
indigenous web users? In F. Sudweeks and C. Ess (eds.), Proc. the Second International Conference on
Cultural Attitudes towards Technology and Communication, 217ff. Murdoch University.
• Collazos, C., González, M.P., Neyem, A., Sturm, C. (2007) Guidelines to develop Emotional Awareness
Devices from a Cultural-Perspective: A Latin-American Example, LNCS, HCCI.
• Ess, Charles (ed.). (2001). Culture, Technology, Communication: Towards an Intercultural Global
Village, with Fay Sudweeks, Foreword by Susan Herring. Albany, NY Press.
• Gil, R., Collazos, C. (2007). Integrating emotions and knowledge in aesthetics designs using cultural
profiles, LNCS, HCCI.
• Hofstede, G. (1980). Culture’s Consequences: International Differences in Work-related Values.
Beverly Hills: Sage.
• Heaton, L. (2001). Preserving Communication Context: Virtual Workspace and Interpersonal Space
in Japanese CSCW. In Ess (2001), 213-240. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
• Hongladarom, S. (2001). Global Culture, Local Cultures and the Internet: The Thai Example. In Ess,
307-324. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
• Jørgensen, G. (2003). Can an online library service bridge the gap of cultural understanding? Seeing
design isues in the light of cross-cultural communication. IT University, Denmark.
• Kampurri, M. and Markku T. (2004). Culture in Human-Computer Interaction Studies: A survey of
ideas and definitions. Proc. Cultural Attitudes Towards Communication and Technology 2004, 43-57.
Murdoch, Western Australia: Murdoch University
• Würtz, E. (2004). Intercultural Communication on Websites: An analysis of visual communication in
high- and low-context cultures. Proc. Cultural Attitudes Towards Communication and Technology 2004,
109-122. Murdoch, Western Australia: Murdoch University.

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