Systems Services and Mutilingual Design
When designing an HR system your subject matter experts (HR) meet with your systems experts (IT) to design the system. In a multilingual or international environment there are many considerations that need to be built into the design, for example:
- Dates are not structured the same throughout the world. Not everyone uses the order month - day - year.
- Entering text in English is not the same as entering text in Russian or in Mandarin Chinese.
- A search function that finds information based on family name may provide little help if most of the people in the database have the same family name, for example Singh. Searching by family and given name may be necessary.
Seemingly simple differences in practice in different locations can cause the system to be less effective.
ALTA has in-depth experience with the details of systems design in a multilingual environment. We know how to identify and deal with the differences that arise because of names, dates, colors, fonts, word expansion, etc. The time for ALTA to be involved is at the beginning of the project.
Localization Services
For help files, software and websites, ALTA provides full localization services to prepare your message for an international audience. Beyond basic translation, these services include turnkey services to:
- internationalize your software or website
- rework and test your code and scripts
- localize the GUI
- translate all database-driven content, static content, meta tags, GUI elements, etc.
- test on a native-language platform with the browsers you're targeting
For more information click on Contact ALTA Language Solutions above, or call Danielle Reier at 404.920.3820.
