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284 Kenneth Keniston

firm, SAP, which specializes in accounting software), use by non-
English speakers requires localization. Localization entails adapting
software written in one language for members of one culture to an-
other language for members of another culture. It is sometimes
thought to be simply a matter of translation. In fact, it involves not
only translation of individual words, but deeper modifications of
computer codes involving scrolling patterns, character sets, box
sizes, dates, dictionary search patterns, icons, etc. Arabic and He-
brew scroll from right to left, unlike the North European languages.
Russian, Greek, Persian and Hindi involve non-Roman character
sets. Ideographic, non-phonetic written languages like Chinese and
Japanese involve tens of thousands of distinct characters.
Translation alone is an exceedingly complex part of localization.
Ideally, it is a multistage process involving initial translation, fol-
lowed by “back-translation” into the original language, comparison
of the back-translated text with the original, adjustment of the
translation as necessary, and incorporation of the now corrected
translation into the final localized program. The cost per word thus
translated has been estimated as approximately one dollar. Given
that large programs like operating systems or office suites may con-
tain tens of thousands of pages of text, localization even at the level
of translation is both complex and expensive.
But localization involves more than simple translation.
Scrolling patterns, character sets, box sizes, dates, and icons must
be adapted to the new language and the culture in which it is spo-
ken. As one observer has noted with regard to computer icons, there
is no gesture of the human hand which is not obscene in some lan-
guage. As others have noted, the color red, which indicates “stop” or
“danger” in the US, may indicate life or hope in another culture. Dic-
tionary search patterns in a language like Finnish, which is highly
inflected, require searching out the root verb from a word which may
contain as prefixes and suffixes what in English would be the bal-
ance of an entire complex sentence. 1
Moreover, localization is a worldwide business of growing eco-
nomic importance. The industry association, the Localization Industry
Standards Association (LISA), in Geneva holds periodic meetings of lo-
calizers and publishes a newsletter (<http://www.LISA.unige.ch>).
Every major software firm has a localization division, and many at-
tribute large parts of their sales not to the original English language
version, but to localized versions sold in other countries. More than
half of Microsoft sales are outside the United States—although not