International Variables: Translation Problems for the Localization of Web Apps

In localization, international variables refer to source cultural elements that require a certain degree of adaptation in a target culture, such as date, time and number formats, currencies, colours, images, humour elements, etc. Although localization involves the adaptation of a digital product to a specific market, certain aspects of localization projects (i.e., source file formats, translation tools or project specifications) could become an obstacle to achieving that ultimate goal of localization, even giving rise to errors or culturally inappropriate translations. This qualitative, interpretative study analyses a corpus compiled from the online help pages of web applications to identify and describe potential translation problems caused by international variables.