Software Testing

Once the strings are translated and inserted back in the software, it is very important to do both automated and manual testing to find bugs that could have been introduced during translation. A typical example are truncated strings: Most European languages use strings that are 20-30% longer than the original English to express the same concept, and if the user interface has not taken this growth into account, strings may not be completely visible, and in many cases functionality may be lost.

All our manual linguistic testing is performed by native speakers with many years of experience in software localization, on systems running localized versions of the operating system. We can test on nearly all versions of Windows, Mac OS and Palm OS.

Our testing is customized for each application we test, but normally it will include:

Testing for truncation - European languages typically use on average 20% more space for the same text that in the corresponding English string. The UI needs to be designed with this constraint in mind but testing of all windows will ensure that all the text is readable in the target languages, and identify those buttons, labels, dropdown boxes that need to be resized. Depending on the software, we can to perform the resizing by editing the resource files or let your engineers fix these bugs.

Testing for encoding problems - We verify that the UI does not contain corrupted high ASCII characters.

Testing for untranslated text - We use computers running a version of the operating system in the target language and verify that all the strings visible in the UI are translated in the target language.

Testing of menus and shortcuts - We use computers with localized keyboards to verify that the keyboard shortcuts can be typed on a system similar to the one used in the country where the software will be used. We also verify that there are no duplicate hotkeys used in the menus.

Testing for correct terminology in context - We verify that the terms used for buttons, menu items and other UI elements have the correct translation in the context.

If you don’t have a testing script, we can help you generate one tailored to the requirements of linguistic testing.

We normally regress all reproducible bugs with a second tester to verify that the bug is indeed reproducible and that the steps listed in our bug report are correct and clear. Wherever possible we take screenshots of the bugs that are included in the bug reports. Our bug reports are clear and detailed and will include screenshots as well as all the steps required to reproduce the bug.

For many kinds of linguistic bugs - such as string truncation - we can resize the UI using tools that are safe and don't touch your code, or we can modify the strings to fix the linguistic bugs. This is an optional service, and if you prefer you can do the resizing in-house.

We can also perform automated testing that can catch the vast majority of truncation errors and of problems with duplicate hotkeys. It is still important to have manual testing performed to catch all the remaining linguistic bugs and to have one last set of experienced eyes to look at your product.

Dynamic Web Site Testing

For database-driven dynamic web sites, it is important to test the application with a procedure similar to the one for standalone software applications. Some of the tests are equally important (testing terminology in context, for example) while others may not be relevant (testing menus and keyboard shortcuts, for example).

In addition, it is important to test using content in the target language to identify encoding problems, and test using localized versions of database and server software (where applicable) to identify any further linguistic issues.

We are able to test dynamic sites written in Coldfusion, ASP and ASP.NET. Other programming languages may be available on request.

We can also test the localized sites using a variety of web browsers (Internet Explorer, Opera, Netscape, OmniWeb, etc.) on Windows and Mac OS at different screen resolutions to verify that the page displays correctly and that there are no issues with the localized text in the graphics.