Pseudolocalization - Pseudolocalization Process at Microsoft

Pseudolocalization Process At Microsoft

Michael Kaplan (a Microsoft program manager) explains the process or pseudo-localization similar to:

an eager and hardworking yet naive intern localizer, who is eager to prove himself and who is going to translate every single string that you don't say shouldn't get translated.

One of the key features of the pseudolocalization process is that it happens automatically, during the development cycle, as part of a routine build. The process is almost identical to the process used to produce true localized builds, but is done before a build is tested, much earlier in the development cycle. This leaves time for any bugs that are found to be fixed in the base code, which is much easier than bugs not found until a release date is near.

The builds that are produced by the pseudolocalization process are tested using the same QA cycle as a non-localized build. Since the pseudo-locales are mimicking English text, they are can be tested by an English speaker. Recently, beta version of Windows (7 and 8) have been released with some pseudo-localized strings intact. For these recent version of Windows, the pseudo-localized build is the primary staging build (the one created routinely for testing), and the final English language build is a "localized" version of that.