Emulating localization

I love this topic. Maybe because English is not my mother tongue, so I have seen and felt the pain when a site fails to honor other cultures.

There are many debates about what localization is, what internationalization is, and the difference between them. While I bet there will be debate over whether I should treat both as a whole or not, we will treat both as a whole.

When we talk about localization, we're saying that a website should honor its audience:

• It should honor their language.
• It should honor their culture, such as how they read numbers, sort information, and read the content.
• It should honor their beliefs. For example, Green/Good Red/Bad might not apply in every culture.

Localization is a feature.

Ideally, every site on the web should consider localization. But localization can be quite a costly feature to implement. There is a high chance that your company is not Google or Amazon and you cannot afford to localize...