What is Localization Testing?

Entering new markets is one of the common strategies of software product scaling. To find the audience overseas, a product usually needs to undergo some transformation first. And naturally, it is essential to test the product after the implementation of such changes. That’s where localization testing and manual QA testing services company come in.

Why Do You Need Software Localization Testing?

Localization testing has an important role in software testing. It is a way to ensure that software has been adjusted to a target market in terms of language, cultural peculiarities, content, etc.
Users overseas don’t always speak English, and that is a constraint for a software provider. Moreover, different countries use different currencies and measurement systems, and are located in different time zones. Some have write-to-left writing or logographic writing.
Ignoring some of these important moments can become a reason for a product’s failure.

Localization and Internationalization Testing

There are two practices of adjusting a product to foreign markets – localization and internationalization, verified during localization testing and internationalization testing correspondingly.
Unlike localization, internationalization testing aims to verify that a product is suitable for other markets without any changes. In other words, a company strives to create universal software that doesn’t need adjustments to any foreign market during scaling. Therefore, a QA engineer is to check and verify if their attempts have been successful.

Checklists and Test Cases for Localization Testing

Localization testing requires considering a vast number of parameters. To provide a brief overview of this process, we divided it into 5 steps with some examples of popular test cases.

#1. Pre-localization testing

• Aim: to make sure every localization QA tester involved in the project receives enough reference information.
• Cases: background details about the program, material for reference (glossaries, previous translations).

#2. Appearance and layout testing

• Aim: to check the overall look of the interface.
• Cases: quality of images, layout consistency, usage of line breaks/hyphens.

#3. Functionality testing

• Aim: to check if the software runs properly after localization.
• Cases: basic functionality tests, hyperlinks, hot fields, validation of fields, format separation, font support.

#4. Regional specification

• Aim: to check if the contents are presented in a way suitable for the target audience.
• Cases: date/time format, colors and their meaning, currency conversions, accessibility of local numbers, compatibility of product names with local regulations.

#5. Linguistic testing

• Aim: to check the language-related part of the interface.
• Cases: translation accuracy, typos and grammatical errors, presence of text for truncation.

Keep in mind that it’s just a sketch. A final checklist will be more detailed.

Best Practices of Localization Testing

Preparing and organizing localization testing is not a simple task. Here are some tips that may help you to organize the testing process effectively.

• Check if everything’s ready. Make sure you’ve received the final requirements for a product. Make sure all the functional aspects have been covered, as well as the texts and explanations regarding multimedia materials.
• Leave enough time for testing. Testing in a hurry affects the quality of an end product. So it’s better to be careful with estimates, communicate deadlines to a client at the very beginning, and keep them updated in case something takes longer than expected.
• Use automation. Automating some of the testing suites will save time and allow the team to concentrate more on complex manual tasks.
• Work with reusability in mind. If you’ve already tested similar projects, reusing some of the test cases can simplify and speed up the testing process.

To Sum Up

Though localization testing covers a lot of non-technical, content-related aspects, it is still a task of great significance. Therefore, a QA engineer should be as attentive to details as ever. Localization testing helps companies to scale their software products, while users from various countries get to discover and enjoy new digital products. Make sure you don’t miss little things that can affect user experience.