Localisation (sometimes referred to as l10n) is the process of adapting any product designed for a particular "locale" (often a market as defined by the geographical location or linguistic characteristics of the target customers) to make it suitable for another such locale. In software and web development it usually refers to the activity of adapting language, currencies and measurement units, designs, images, contact details and links to suit a new target audience for a website or software product or service. Before localisation can begin it usually necessary for the website or software to undergo an internationalisation process.
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Internationalisation (sometimes referred to as i18n) is the process of adjusting the structure of a website or software product or service in such a way that it can be localised to one or more other "locales". It is the first step in the globalisation process, the second of which is referred to as localisation.
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Globalisation is the term used by some software development companies to describe the combined tasks of internationalisation and localisation.
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Computer-assisted translation (or CAT) is the term used in the translation industry for some of the powerful software packages used to help improve the quality and consistency of translations at the same time as speeding up the translation process. Typical features of such tools include translation memory and terminology management functionalities. Some products also include capacity to integrate external machine translation systems into their set of functions. Major CAT tools include SDL Trados, Star Transit, MemoQ, Across Language Server, Déjà Vu, amongst many others. CAT tools specialised in software localisation include SDL Passolo and Alchemy Catalyst.
Fuzzy match
All good computer-assisted translation systems include a functionality to compare translation units to be translated with others that have already been translated in the past, assigning a percentage value to them, depending on how similar the current text is to one that has already been translated. This can significantly accelerate the translation process, as well as helping the translator keep his or her work consistent with work already done in the past. Such comparisons are also often referred to as "partial matches".
100% match
If a current translation unit is absolutely identical to one and only one translation unit that has been translated in the past, then the translation memory tool will mark it as a 100% match. Penalties may be applied to matches for cases where the translation memory contains two different translations for the translation unit.
Context match
When a translation memory finds a unique 100% match whose previous and subsequent translation units are also 100%, then it considers it a "context match", which indicates with an even higher level of certainty that the previous translation can be adopted for the current one.
Translation
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, translation is the communication of the meaning of a source-language text by means of an equivalent target-language text. For our purposes, it is the central discipline involved in most localisation workflows. However, for localisation to be completed to an acceptable level of quality, the translation process usually needs to be accompanied by other tasks, both before translation begins and after it is completed.
Locale
A locale is a set of parameters that defines a user's language, country and any special variant presentations that a website or application user interface should display to such a user. These presentations may include the way currencies and numbers are displayed, date and time formats and even character encoding and keyboard layout. A locale is almost always defined primarily by a language, usually with a secondary regional, national or other territorial classification.
