While well-educated designers and those individuals working specifically for companies that do a lot of localization understand these nuances, most of us don’t get exposed to these ideas. Yet, we begin to see how necessary it becomes to have an awareness of not just the technical aspects of Internationalization, but the socio-cultural ones within localization.
What’s more, the bulk of information we have when it comes to designing sites typically comes from studies and work done on sites built in English and promoted to Western culture at large. We’re making a critical mistake by not including diverse languages and cultural issues within our usability and information architecture studies.
Consider the following design from the BBC:
In this case, we’re dealing with English, which is read left to right. We are also dealing with U.K. cultural norms. Notice the following:
- Location of of navigation
- Use of the color red
- Use of diverse symbols
- Mix of symbols, icons and photos
- Location of Search
Now look at this design, which is the Arabic version of the BBC News, read right to left, and dealing with cultural norms within the Arabic-speaking world.
Notice the following:
- Location of of navigation (location switches to the right)
- Use of the color blue (blue is considered the “safest” global color)
- No use of symbols and icons whatsoever
- Limitation of imagery to photos
- In most cases, the photos show people, not objects
- Location of Search
Admittedly, some choices here are more obvious than others in terms of why they were made. But one thing that stands out is that the placement of search is the same for both versions. Is this the result of a specific localization decision, or based on what we believe about usability at large? This is exactly the kind of question that designers working on localization have to seek answers to, instead of relying on popular best practices and belief systems that exist for English-only Web sites.
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