Internationalization

materials becoming more influenced by the rich international environment, but exchanges among students at all levels are also playing an increasingly important role. In Europe, for example, the Socrates-Erasmus Programme stimulates exchanges across European universities. Also, the Soros Foundation  provides many opportunities for students from central Asia and eastern Europe. Programmes such as the International Baccalaureate have contributed to the internationalisation of education. Some scholars argue that, regardless of whether one system is considered better or worse than another, experiencing a different way of education can often be considered to be the most important, enriching element of an international learning experience.

The development of higher education in the Western countries involves ideas of internationalisation, included in curricular objectives. Policy-makers stipulate internationalisation ideologies, from a politico-economic perspective, where ideas about flows of various cultural elements are incorporated in visionary idealistic terms. Nevertheless teachers and students and others concerned with higher education, experience the nature and meaning of "internationalising higher education" and "an internationalised teaching and learning" as vague, ambiguous and difficult to transfer into educational practice. This thesis investigates the phenomenon of internationalisation through an empirical approach, focusing on the experiences of teachers and students. The aim was to describe teachers´ and students´ experiences of internationalisation related to their educational context, as well as their experiences of aspects of internationalisation in a wider sense. Precise predefinitions were avoided due to an explorative research approach. An empirical investigation comprising four studies was conducted, involving interviews with students (studies I and II) and teachers (study IV) and a survey study involving teachers (study III) all participating in the basic program in the Swedish nurse education within higher education. A phenomenographic approach was used in the data collections and analyses. The main results of the empirical study show that students hold qualitatively different understandings of internationalisation, also, the ways they structure their thinking about the phenomenon varies (studies I and II). The results show, that teachers understanding of internationalising higher education and their approach to an internationalised teaching and learning did not represent a shared culture and there was no shared curriculum including a distinct understanding of internationalisation (studies III and IV). Some students and teachers related personal growth to the learning of intercultural content. Internationalisation of higher education has primarily been related to a broader post-industrial worldwide policy development, and to processes of techno-structural political and economical worldwide forces, and forces of internationalisation ideologies in terms of intentions and objectives. The presence of a pedagogical and didactical perspective on the issue, "internationalisation of higher education", is clearly insufficient represented as a basis for understanding and concretising curricular objectives of internationalisation. Drawing from the thesis results, arguments are put forward emphasising a need to change/turn the focus towards how we deal with internationalisation of higher education. It is asserted that from a pedagogical and didactical stance there is a need for a development of a curriculum theory including internationalisation. The overall conclusion is that it will be a great challenge for policymakers as well as teachers, to address internationalisation of the Swedish nursing education within higher education from a pedagogical and didactical stance, when aiming at supporting students in their development of international competencies and capabilities.
Nomenclature

The support of multiple languages by computer systems can be considered a continuum between localization ("L10n"), through multilingualization (or "m17n"), to internationalization ("i18n").
•A localized system has been adapted or converted for use in a particular locale (other than the one it was originally developed for), including the language of the user interface (UI), input, and display, and features such as time/date display and currency. Each instance of the system only supports a single locale, and there is no explicit support for languages that are not part of that locale (although the character set may coincidentally be usable for other languages).
•Multilingualized software supports multiple languages for concurrent display and input, but has a single UI language which cannot be changed. Multi-locale support for other features like date, time, number, and currency formats varies as the system tends towards full internationalization. In general, a multilingualized system is intended for use in one specific locale, but is capable of handling multilingual content as data.
•An internationalized system is equipped for use in a range of "locales" (or by users of multiple languages), by allowing the co-existence of several languages and character sets for input, display, and UI. In particular, a system may not be considered internationalized in the fullest sense unless the UI language is selectable by the user at runtime. Full internationalization may extend beyond support for multiple languages and orthography to compliance with jurisdiction-specific legislation (in respect of copyright, for instance) and other non-linguistic conventions.
The distinction arises because it is significantly more difficult to create a multi-lingual UI than simply to support the character sets and keyboards needed to express multiple languages. To internationalize a UI, every text string employed in interaction must be translated into all supported languages; then all output of literal strings, and literal parsing of input in UI code must be replaced by hooks to i18n libraries.
It should be noted that "internationalized" does not necessarily mean that a system can be used absolutely anywhere, since simultaneous support for all possible locales is both practically almost impossible and commercially very hard to justify. In many cases an internationalized system includes full support only for the most spoken languages, plus any others of particular relevance to the application.
Scope
Focal points of internationalization and localization efforts include:
•Language
•Computer-encoded text
•Alphabets/scripts; most recent systems use the Unicode standard to solve many of the character encoding problems.

•Different systems of numerals
•Writing direction which is e.g. left to right in German, right to left in Persian, Hebrew and Arabic
•Spelling variants for different countries where the same language is spoken, e.g. localization (en-US, en-CA, en-GB-oed) vs. localisation (en-GB, en-AU)
•Text processing differences, such as the concept of capitalization which exists in some scripts and not in others, different text sorting rules, etc.
•Plural forms in text output, which differ depending upon language
•Input
•Enablement of keyboard shortcuts on any keyboard layout

•Graphical representations of text (printed materials, online images containing text)
•Spoken (Audio)
•Subtitling of film and video
•Culture
•Images and colors: issues of comprehensibility and cultural appropriateness
•Names and titles
•Government assigned numbers (such as the Social Security number in the US, National Insurance number in the UK, Isikukood in Estonia, and Resident registration number in South Korea.) and passports
•Telephone numbers, addresses and international postal codes

•Currency (symbols, positions of currency markers)
•Weights and measures
•Paper sizes
•Writing conventions
•Date/time format, including use of different calendars
•Time zones (UTC in internationalized environments)
•Formatting of numbers (decimal separator, digit grouping)

•Differences in symbols (e.g. quoting text using double-quotes (" "), as in English, or guillemets (« »), as in French).
•Any other aspect of the product or service that is subject to regulatory compliance
The distinction between internationalization and localization is subtle but important. Internationalization is the adaptation of products for potential use virtually everywhere, while localization is the addition of special features for use in a specific locale. Internationalization is done once per product, while localization is done once for each combination of product and locale. The processes are complementary, and must be combined to lead to the objective of a system that works globally. Subjects unique to localization include:



•Language translation
•National varieties of languages (see language localization)

•Special support for certain languages such as East Asian languages
•Local customs
•Local content
•Symbols
•Order of sorting (Collation)
•Aesthetics
•Cultural values and social context

Business process for internationalizing software
In order to internationalize a product, it is important to look at a variety of markets that your product will foreseeably enter. Details such as field length for addresses, ability to make the zip code field optional to address countries that do not have zip codes, plus the introduction of new registration flows that adhere to local laws are just some of the examples that make internationalization a complex project.

A broader approach takes into account cultural factors regarding for example the adaptation of the business process logic or the inclusion of individual cultural (behavioral) aspects.
Coding practice
The current prevailing practice is for applications to place text in resource strings which are loaded during program execution as needed. These strings, stored in resource files, are relatively easy to translate. Programs are often built to reference resource libraries depending on the selected locale data. One software library that aids this is gettext.
Thus to get an application to support multiple languages one would design the application to select the relevant language resource file at runtime. Resource files are translated to the required languages. This method tends to be application-specific and, at best, vendor-specific. The code required to manage date entry verification and many other locale-sensitive data types also must support differing locale requirements. Modern development systems and operating systems include sophisticated libraries for international support of these types.
Some tools help in detecting i18n issues and guiding software resolution of those issues, such as Lingoport's Globalyzer.
Difficulties

While translating existing text to other languages may seem easy, it is more difficult to maintain the parallel versions of texts throughout the life of the product. For instance, if a message displayed to the user is modified, all of the translated versions must be changed. This in turn results in a somewhat longer development cycle.
Many localization issues (e.g. writing direction, text sorting) require more profound changes in the software than text translation. For example, OpenOffice.Org achieves this with compilation switches.
To some degree (e.g. for Quality assurance), the development team needs someone who understands foreign languages and cultures and has a technical background. In large societies with one dominant language/culture, it may be difficult to find such a person.
Cost vs benefit tradeoff

In a commercial setting, the benefit from localization is access to more markets. Some[who?] argue that the commercial case to localize products into multiple languages is very obvious, and that all is needed is a budgetary commitment from the producer to finance the considerable costs. It costs more to produce products for international markets, but in an increasingly global economy, supporting only one language/market is scarcely an optionStill, proprietary software localization is impacted by economic viability and usually lacks the ability for end users and volunteers to self-localize, as is often the case in open-source environments.
Since open source software can generally be freely modified and redistributed, it is more amenable to localization. The KDE project, for example, has been translated into over 100 languages.