Geopolitical-Ready and Localized Text Guidelines

4/19/2010

Apply the following geopolitical guidelines to the user interface text:

Always use the term country/region instead of the word country.
Always use the term capital/major city instead of the word capital.
Be cautious when using an untranslated trademarked term from the United States because it might be interpreted as an offensive or otherwise undesirable term in another language.

Apply the following localization guidelines to the user interface text:

Use terminology, punctuation, acronyms, and capitalization consistently.
Avoid idioms, jargon, colloquialisms, abbreviations, acronyms, and metaphors whenever possible.
Avoid long compound sentences with multiple nouns because they are difficult to translate.
Use descriptors wherever possible.
When using punctuation, take into account that other languages have different rules.
Localizing English text usually increases the length of the text, which may affect the layout of controls. As needed, use standard abbreviations and rephrase text to ensure that it fits on the screen.
The following illustration shows the difference in text length when the same content is localized in three different languages.

English German Japanese

See Also