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Internationalization & Localization

Testing - A Case Study

Outsourcing Interna-
Q A InfoTech provides Internationalization and Localization
tionalization and Lo- testing support to a company which is the leader in providing
multimedia and creativity software products. It is a brand name
calization Testing to which has market leading desktop publishing and media edit-
ing desktop products. Very recently the company has started
an expert ensures the offering the same line of products for web and rich internet ap-
plication software development. They have a long line-up of
loyal product customers such as enterprises and retail users.
quality of your product
across locales

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Our deep understanding, long experience and smart

optimization techniques makes us a preferred interna-
tionalization and localization testing partner
Business Need the product in other locales was much higher as com-
pared to the effort required to certify the product in
In order to compete in Global Markets and to be- the native locale. The cost of putting such an effort in-
come world leaders in its domains, the client planned creased the budget of product development. Also, the
to release multiple products in many continents product development schedule at client’s end were in
namely Americas, Asia, Continental Europe and jeopardy because of the volume of testing required for
Eastern Europe. Releasing the products in all these internationalization and localization.
continents means that the product needs to comply
to the local user culture. To be successful in captur-
ing the global market, software product developers With so many tests to be conducted per locale, man-
need to step out of their native locale and develop agement of the whole process becomes much critical.
world-ready products. This asks for Internationaliza- Managing hardware and software to simulate native
tion and Localization of the product. As easily said, user environment, building a team of skilled test-
localized product is a product with UI translated to ing engineers who appreciate and understand what
native language. However, Localization is not just would break in localized software, and above all get-
about translating all strings but also making sure the ting to a release-ready product within the allocated
product conforms to a local user experience. This in time and budget can be a daunting task for any team
turn calls for Internationalization, or developing a not prepared for it
product that can be adapted to local usage which is
a combination of product functionality on the local
environment, acceptance of localized character set, As like any of the client’s regular line of product re-
keyboard/input styles, time zone etc. Not just the leases the client did not want to compromise with the
development, but also ensuring the quality of local quality of the localized product. Also the challenge
user experience is a big challenge. was to meet the hard release to market deadlines and
limited development budget. The client was in search
for an outsourcing partner who could provide localiza-
Ensuring Quality tion testing services to meet the success needs. Since
localization was a new thing for this client, they were
The intricate process of ensuring the quality of local-
not very aware with the processes and technical as-
ized product involves testing the localized version
pects of Internationalization and Localization testing.
of the product on every single locale/culture that
it supports. This effort not only involves testing of
proper translation but also relevant functional veri- The Challenges
fications. This would involve verifications ranging
from simpler ones like checking for text truncation • How to achieve:
to much complex functionality like support for Uni- o Quality for localized version of the product
code character sets, checks for sorting rules etc. o Cost effectiveness
o Delivery on time
A global product needs to be certified on multiple • What to test in Internationalization and Localization
locales and configurations. The configurations for of the product
desktop based and web based products are differ-
ent. At our client end, the effort required to certify • How to evolve the Bug Tracking Process

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The QA InfoTech Solution we provide various strategies of optimizing test cover-

age/risk and effort. An optimization matrix was devel-
An Internationalization and Localization Testing oped using our past experiences and understanding
Service provider was a natural choice for the client to of the internationalization engineering and core locali-
outsource the efforts of Internationalization and Lo- zation issues. The aim of developing this matrix was to
calization testing for the huge line of products under minimize efforts involved in testing without risking the
the challenging circumstances. QA InfoTech being quality of the delivered product. Internationalization
experienced in this field of testing, was selected for and Localization testing desktop application involves
outsourcing partnership by the client. We proposed testing of the localized application on a localized ver-
a smart testing approach as a solution to all the cli- sion of the operating system. Considering that there
ent problems to ensure the high quality of product are multiple versions of the operating system available
in multiple locales. The approach was different for in the market and hardware on which this operating
Internationalization and Localization Testing. The in- system works and also that there are a number of lo-
ternationalization testing was performed on a single cales that the product has to support, the combina-
locale and its main purpose was to ensure that prod- tion of configurations on which each test cases has to
uct is engineered to adapt to the culture of all coun- be executed becomes very huge. It is not possible to
tries. The pillar of the localization functional testing cover everything within the said time and budget. The
is the Test Optimization matrix. The matrix is a single approach was to optimize the coverage plan in such a
entity defining the amount of testing effort required way that we are able to cover the testing well within
on each locale. It can be customized to meet the the budget and time and yet achieve quality.
product requirements. By adopting our smart test-
ing approach, the client was able to reduce the cost
of software development.
Infrastructure and Labs
The Approach Localization testing labs needs to be equipped with
hardware and software to simulate any and every na-
• Test planning to meeting schedule
tive user action and experience on a localized product.
• Test coverage optimization matrix This includes the use of Localized keyboards and input
• Software tools to support test execution devices, operating systems in various languages and
hardware meeting the product requirements. Main-
• Evolving the bug process to incorporate Interna-
taining such a lab for a number of testers who will be
tionalization and Localization testing
testing on different locales is a huge cost which was
• Support for linguistic verifications unbearable under the constrained budget. So we
adopted a number of software and hardware solutions
to minimize this lab and environment setup costs. One
Using our vast experience in this field we laid out a
such solution is Virtualization, which helps us simulate
step by step plan to meet the deadline of the release
multiple Operating System and Locale environment
and ensuring quality, by making sure that the tasks
on a single desktop machine.
such as Localizability testing, Enablement testing,
Localization Functional testing and Linguistic test-
ing, are scheduled for execution at the correct time.
This plan further helped us and the client strategize
Using our vast experience in this
and measure the progress.
field we laid out a step by step
Smart Optimization plan to meet the deadline of the
The next task in hand was to complete the test exe-
cution within the planned budget and time. For this release and ensuring quality
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Tracking the Defects

The defect tracking tools and mechanisms need to the laid our processes. We created a big team of in-
be enhanced to support tracking of Internationali- ternationalization and localization testing engineers
zation and Localization issues found during testing. who have hands on experience and are expert in these
We helped the client to evolve their existing bug fields of testing. To achieve the tight project deadlines
life cycle to incorporate these enhancements. These was a challenge as there were periods of high peaks
enhancements in turn helped the client to generate and valleys of work. The team at QA InfoTech walked
metrics to measure the quality of Localized Product an extra mile to achieve the tight schedules and all this
during the development process. effort was appreciated by the client.

Supporting Linguistic Veri- QA InfoTech value additions:

fication o A well defined process for end to end internationali-
Linguistic verification or verifying the translation of zation and localization testing
strings on the localized product is another very im- o Smart test optimization matrix to reduce human and
portant check. We need to have skilled Linguistic ex- hardware resource resulting in cost-effectiveness
perts for each locale to do this job. The problem with o Reduced time to market with shorter release cycles
linguistic experts is that they are not always very for localized builds across continents
computer savvy. For a complex product which has
complicated work flows the linguistic experts with- o Certainty in terms of quality of the product and on
out the functional knowledge of the products will time delivery
not be able to perform linguistic verifications effi- o At the end, a high quality product available in multi-
ciently. The solution was to either train the linguistic ple locales
experts in the product work flows or a way to provide
them with just the screens to verify the translations.
Training a number of linguistic experts that reside in The dedication, hard work and expertise of QA In-
their remote countries is a very time consuming and foTech team resulted in a rise in the revenues of the
costly task. We implemented a screenshooting proc- Client, going beyond forecast, all through the engage-
ess which involved Localization Functional Testers ment. It is rightly said that
capturing the screenshots of all the product screens “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not
and providing it to Linguistic experts for verification. an act, but a habit.”
This process helped the client in optimizing the cost
of Linguistic verifications.

Client Benefits
QA InfoTech team ensured that each new feature
added to the application by the client provided bet-
ter user experience in the localized version of the
product and the user experience meets that of a lo-
cal product user.

The team at QA InfoTech was able to unearth the

bugs early in the product development cycle with

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 End towww.qainfotech.com
End Testing Services
Functional • Automated • Load • Localization
Usability • Integration • Mobile • Security

Contact us at
info@qainfotech.com
About QA InfoTech
QA InfoTech is a leading Software Quality Assurance and
Visit us at Testing company specializing in providing independ-
ent , unbiased testing services to world class businesses.
www.qainfotech.com Through its wide range of services constituting of function-
al testing, acceptance testing, localization testing, test au-
tomation and performance testing, QA InfoTech has helped
Read our blog at many Fortune 500 companies in creating and successfully
executing their QA strategy.
www.qainfotech.com/blog
QA InfoTech specializes in providing top-notch internation-
alization and localization testing services and works with
Follow us on Twitter at leading software companies to validate their products to
www.twitter.com/qainfotech ensure proper functionality across different languages. The
forceful combination of our skilled localization testing en-
gineers, flexible resource model, extensive labs and a smart
testing approach that optimizes test execution on different
locales and platforms helps us deliver high quality and cost-
effective localization testing solutions to our clients.

Established in 2003, with less than five testing experts, QA

InfoTech has grown leaps and bounds with five QA Centers
of Excellence in US and India, and more than 450 Testing
engineers.

Excellence, Partnership and Commitment are the three hall-

marks of the way we approach our clients, we believe you
will see this in our service and our expert team.

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Copyright © 2009 QA InfoTech Pvt. Ltd.

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