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Software Engineering vocabulary · Release and Maintenance

Localization

Meaning in software engineering, with examples

/ˌloʊkələˈzeɪʃən/nounCommon term

In software engineering, localization means: Adapting a game for players who speak another language and live in another culture: translating text and voice, and adjusting things like fonts, dates, jokes and images.

In Turkish: yerelleştirme, lokalizasyon

How it is used

Often shortened to loc or L10n. Localization teams and vendors work from string tables, and localization QA (LQA) checks the text inside the game. A common problem is German or Turkish UI text being longer than the English and not fitting.

Example sentences

  1. The Turkish localization made several menu labels too long, so we had to resize the buttons.

  2. Don't hard-code strings; all text must go through the localization system.

Common collocations

  • localization team
  • localization QA
  • localization vendor
  • string table
  • localization-ready
  • platformThe hardware or store that a game runs on and is sold through, such as PC, PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo Switch, iOS or Android, or a store like Steam.
  • QAShort for quality assurance: the work of checking that software meets its requirements and works well. It also names the people or team who do this work.

This word in other fields

The same English word can have a different meaning in another field:

More terms: Release and Maintenance

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