Speak your users' language: what to look out for when going global
summary
Checklist for globalizing an app: always use locale-aware APIs for dates and times (prefer ISO YYYY‑MM‑DD for storage, format with locale), format money with NumberFormatter not string concatenation, handle Arabic‑style plural rules (3–10 plural, 11–12 singular) via ICU MessageFormat instead of “if count > 1”, make emojis and placeholders translatable and escape percent signs (WordPress broke on %), sort with Collator, and prefer browser language with a user override.
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chapters (11)
- 0:00Introduction to globalizing applications
- 2:06Date format pitfalls
- 5:40Currency formatting
- 9:36Pluralization rules
- 14:42ICU message format
- 15:45Emoji cultural issues
- 17:14Word order in translations
- 20:06UI word length
- 21:51Sorting in alphabets
- 22:56Global name myths
- 25:05Q&A
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