Lost in agility? approaching software localization in agile software development

Abstract

Adapting software for different languages is required to gain market access by increasing product acceptance and usability, and satisfying legal requirements. This process commonly consists of two steps: Internationalization, i.e. the generalization of any language- and culture-specific properties and elements of the software in question, and localization, i.e. the specialization of said elements for specific languages, cultures and countries [1]. It is a topic with increasing relevance as new technologies enable new software uses and interaction modes, which in turn create new cultural dependencies which need to be localized, and new ways to do it, e.g. crowdsourcing [2] and machine translation [3]. © 2011 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.