Globalization Glossary

This glossary of terminology defines commonly used concepts for software internationalization.

ASCII
American Standard Code for Information Interchange. A Latin-based character set with a 7- (ASCII) or 8-bit (Extended ASCII) encoding scheme to assign character codes for up to 256 characters. Includes letters, numerals, punctuation marks, control characters, etc. ASCII is considered both a character set and a character-encoding scheme. The 128 characters of the ASCII character set are always found as the lowest 128 characters of other character encoding schemes.

Character Encoding
The systematic method of defining the correspondence between a numerical code and a character. The numerical code is used to represent the character internally on a computer.

Character Set
The collection of characters that define a written language system or a set of written language systems. This term is independent of computer use and is often confused with the term character encoding.

Endianness
Big endian formats store data so that the most significant byte is ordered first. The Motorola microprocessor processes big endian byte order. For example, the big endian method stores the hexadecimal number A02B as A02B. Conversely, little endian formats store data so that the least significant byte is ordered first. The Intel microprocessor processes little endian byte order. This is also called reverse byte ordering. For example, the little endian method stores the hexadecimal number A02B as 2BA0.

Globalization
The process of preparing a software application for multiple locales and/or languages. A combination of the processes of internationalization and localization.

Internationalization (I18n)
The process of developing a software application with features and code designs independent of language and locale that is locale neutral. Internationalized source code base simplifies the creation of an application that supports multiple locales.

Locale
The features of an application's environment that depend on language, country, and culture. Locale determines conventions such as character encoding, collation order, keyboard layout, and formats (date, time, number, currency, etc.). Each programming language has a standard implementation for locale.

Localization (L10n)
The process of adapting a software application for specific international markets. Localization may include translating the user interface, documentation or online help, resizing dialog boxes, customizing features, and testing results to ensure that the program works as intended.