Localization
Localization refers to adapting a product, service or content to fit a specific market or country.
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This page contains general guidance around best practices for localization. If you have any questions, please contact the Localization team on Slack at #help-localization.
Self-service tips on how to build experiences in a way that's appropriate and meaningful to all our customers, no matter where they are in the world.
Internationalization is the design and development of a product or interface that enables easy localization for target audiences that vary in culture, region, or language.
Localization refers to the adaptation of a product or interface to meet the language, cultural and other requirements of a specific target market/locale.
Converting text from one language to another. Not to be confused with localization, translation is just one part of localizing a product.
A linguistic region defined by both its language and country. Please note that languages and countries won't always have a 1:1 mapping.
| Linguistic region | Language | Country |
|---|---|---|
| fr-FR | French | France |
| fr-CA | French | Canada |
| pt-Brazil | Portuguese | Brazil |
Continue reading to learn how to build experiences in a way that's appropriate and meaningful to all our customers, no matter where they are in the world.
- Leave blank space around condensed UI components, such as popovers, buttons, and tabs to prevent unexpected line breaks.
- For some languages, text is up to 30% longer on average than English.
- If text gets truncated or has line-breaks at wrong places could lead to grammatical errors and design breaks.
- Make all UI components expandable (auto-layout).
- Don't assign fixed-width or height to UI components, unless there's a compelling reason.
Avoid creating UI sentences. If the layout and functionality of your interface is dependent on a certain word order, it's likely to break when localized. Learn more here.
- Avoid setting a single capitalization design rule that fits all languages.
- In French, Italian, and Spanish (among others) only the first letter should be capitalized for certain words.
- In German (P1), certain types of nouns, gerunds, and names must start with upper-case.
- Developers should avoid using CSS, e.g.
text-transform: capitalize;to handle capitalization.
- Use flags only to represent countries and not to represent languages.
- Always write the name of the language instead of using a flag.
- If text over images is needed, overlay it by code, using HTML and CSS.
