~ 6,600,000,000 humans

~ 200 countries

~ 6,000 languages

~ 190 currencies

1 internet

Internationalization

Internationalisation

Obvious things• Translation

– use Locale::MakeText

• Date formats– check CPAN, it’s there– Date::Japanese::Era, Calendar::Julian

• Currency formating– hopefully everyone will soon use the Euro

• Encoding– RTFM

What state is London in?

Who am I?

• Ed Freyfogle

• Nestoria– property search in UK and Spain

• Yahoo!– based in Munich– 5 years working on i18n – news, finance, sports, search

Market differences

• Size matters in Spain

– users need to be able to sort and filter by size

• Geodata is very different

Market differences (cont.)Odd propensity to advertise property via toilet photos!

non-obvious i18n pitfalls

Problems you can’t solve with CPAN

How will users find you? (SEO)

• What domain? – .com vs .local TLD

• Translate your URLs– http://www.nestoria.co.uk/fitzrovia/flat/rent/bedrooms-2– http://www.nestoria.es/bilbao/piso/alquiler/dormitorios-2

• Local search engines

Operations

• Will you host it here or there?

• Testing– How do you test in a language you can’t

read?

• Deployment– Do all markets stay in sync?

Different Influencers

External Communications

• Who will

– deal with partners that don’t speak English?

– deal with users that don’t speak English?

– generate and respond to press coverage about your product in local language?

Legal Issues

• Data protection

• Tax implications

• Terms and Conditions

Just scratched the surface

• Market Metrics– Germany uses cookie based system from IVW

• Payment Methods– No credit cards, no paypal

These will influence what you have to code

Start planning now, not later

Questions?