Localization Testing - Finding Bugs

Owned by Stacey Brown-Sommers
Jul 26, 2017
3 min read

Learn how to catch potential bugs when testing.

Types of Testing

Linguistic QA

For linguistic testing, testers should look for the following:

Translation should convey the meaning of the source (English).

Consistent translations should be used throughout the product.

Pay particular attention to consistent translation of product names and trademarks!

Translations should be appropriate for the target locale/group.

There should be no corrupted characters or truncated (cut-off) text.

Translations should be free of typos and grammar mistakes.

Use spell checker for every project, even if it is not specifically requested in the instructions.

Special note about QA of Trademarks (TMs)

Trademarks are distinctive signs (e.g. name, logo, symbol, image) used by a business to identify a product or service to consumers and distinguish the product from other businesses.
A trademark may be designated by the following symbols:

Trademarks QA tips:

  • Unless there is an approved translation for the TM in your language, TMs are generally left in English. If it doesn’t sound right in your language, please explain/add a note.
  • Pay particular attention to TMs, make sure it is used consistently throughout the testing materials and the TM symbols are used correctly and are not missing.

Formatting/Design

  • Page size should be correct for the locale.
  • Bullets, tables and columns should be aligned correctly.
  • Page numbering should be consistent with English source (matching content on each page).
  • Font styles and sizes, titles, subheadings, headers, footers should be consistent.
  • Do “Print Preview”

Graphics (buttons, images, headers) should

  • Be positioned correctly
  • Be clear
  • Text should be translated and legible
  • Text should not be truncated
  • “alt tags” should be localized and legible.

Website QA

 Content is viewable correctly in specified browsers (e.g. Internet Explorer 7, Chrome, Firefox)

 Hyperlinks are not broken and point to the correct location

 Links point to localized pages, if those exist

Software QA

Software installs correctly into correct location

No errors or crashes on localized Operating Systems and/or browsers

Functionality is the same as in the English Software

No duplicate hotkeys

Each hotkey should have its own letter. When a dialog gets localized, the hotkey functionality follows the English code, e.g. the first letter of a word will have a hotkey “tag” in it. This often results in a localized dialog having more than 1 function with the same hotkey letter.

Visual appearance is the same as in the English software

Watch out for truncated fields and/or dialogs – This is a common issue in localized software

Dialog sizes can be different though in order to accommodate longer translated sentences.

The Graphical User Interface (GUI) should be translated consistently with the documentation (e.g. Help files, Installation Guides, Readme files).

User Interface and Documentation are different components in a software project and are often localized at different times. This can result in inconsistent translations when the translator doesn’t see the already localized User Interface for example.