With the increasing globalization of the twenty-first century, co-workers who are spread across many countries in multinational corporations need to work cohesively as one unit. The traditional level of multilingual support no longer suffices. Multinational corporations need the next level of multilingual functionality from their software applications to boost productivity and, in some cases, even meet compliance with local regulations.
Product managers in product companies and solution architects of custom-developed applications can enhance the marketability of their software applications by creating a roadmap for incorporating the sophisticated multilingual requirements that such multinational corporations need.
Multilingual Support in Software Products
Let's take the case of an analysis and research application for European asset management companies (AMCs) spread across France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom (UK), and other European countries.
It would be typical for a branch of one such AMC in one country to have employees belonging to another (e.g., the Paris office would have a few German employees). As a result, not only would the product be expected to support multiple languages (e.g., French and German), but it would need the capability to permit an employee to choose the language (e.g., German) instead of installing the French-language version by default.
In many AMCs, investment recommendations for funds traded in one country would need the approval of the chief investment officer (CIO), located at the headquarters in another country, before they could be presented to customers. This means that after logging into the application in the German language, the asset manager in the AMC's Frankfurt office might need to switch over to the English language later while reviewing the data with his UK-based CIO prior to obtaining his or her approval. Once the approval is obtained, it might be necessary to recast all data, reports, and charts into the French language before presenting them to a prospective customer in Paris as part of an investment recommendation. Therefore, the application should not restrict users to the language chosen at the time of logging in, but let them toggle between multiple languages "on the fly."
Apart from the multilingual screens, menus, and help features, the application will have to cater to data entry, querying, and reporting needs in the different supported languages. This means support for various accents such as the German umlaut, French grave, acute, cedilla, circumflex, and the Spanish tilde. In addition, sensitivity to different date formats such as 15 June 2006 in the UK versus 15. Juni 2006 in Germany; and decimal separators such as a comma in the UK versus a period in Continental Europe (e.g., 1,000 versus 1.000) are respectively prevalent in different European languages.
Now, when a London-based asset manager queries for all French funds containing a certain letter in their name, he or she would expect the application to return funds containing not just that letter by itself but its various applicable accents like acute (e.g., "ć"), grave (e.g., à), cedilla (e.g., ç), and circumflex (e.g., ĉ). This means that the application will need to support multilingual query literals, characters, and messages.
Product managers in product companies and solution architects of custom-developed applications can enhance the marketability of their software applications by creating a roadmap for incorporating the sophisticated multilingual requirements that such multinational corporations need.
Multilingual Support in Software Products
Let's take the case of an analysis and research application for European asset management companies (AMCs) spread across France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom (UK), and other European countries.
It would be typical for a branch of one such AMC in one country to have employees belonging to another (e.g., the Paris office would have a few German employees). As a result, not only would the product be expected to support multiple languages (e.g., French and German), but it would need the capability to permit an employee to choose the language (e.g., German) instead of installing the French-language version by default.
In many AMCs, investment recommendations for funds traded in one country would need the approval of the chief investment officer (CIO), located at the headquarters in another country, before they could be presented to customers. This means that after logging into the application in the German language, the asset manager in the AMC's Frankfurt office might need to switch over to the English language later while reviewing the data with his UK-based CIO prior to obtaining his or her approval. Once the approval is obtained, it might be necessary to recast all data, reports, and charts into the French language before presenting them to a prospective customer in Paris as part of an investment recommendation. Therefore, the application should not restrict users to the language chosen at the time of logging in, but let them toggle between multiple languages "on the fly."
Apart from the multilingual screens, menus, and help features, the application will have to cater to data entry, querying, and reporting needs in the different supported languages. This means support for various accents such as the German umlaut, French grave, acute, cedilla, circumflex, and the Spanish tilde. In addition, sensitivity to different date formats such as 15 June 2006 in the UK versus 15. Juni 2006 in Germany; and decimal separators such as a comma in the UK versus a period in Continental Europe (e.g., 1,000 versus 1.000) are respectively prevalent in different European languages.
Now, when a London-based asset manager queries for all French funds containing a certain letter in their name, he or she would expect the application to return funds containing not just that letter by itself but its various applicable accents like acute (e.g., "ć"), grave (e.g., à), cedilla (e.g., ç), and circumflex (e.g., ĉ). This means that the application will need to support multilingual query literals, characters, and messages.
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