Process and tool support for internationalization and localization testing in software product development

Abstract

Software globalization is an inevitable step for many companies. Developing for a global market requires the internationalization of software products and their localization to different countries, regions, and cultures. Internationalization and localization testing verifies that localized variants of the software product work, look and feel as expected. The highly repetitive task of testing of multiple language variants makes localization testing a perfect candidate for automation with a high potential to reduce the involved human effort and to speed-up release cycles. However, there is surprisingly little support for localization testing by existing test automation tools. Furthermore, there are only few empirical results or practical insights available as the topic is rarely addressed in the scientific literature. In this paper we describe the process and tools applied for automated testing of the different localized variants of a large commercial software product, we report on the issues detected with automated localization tests, and we discuss our experiences and lessons learned.