How to Test in Sixteen Languages? Automation Support for Localization Testing

Developing for a global market requires the internationalization of software products and their localization to different countries, regions, and cultures. Localization testing verifies that the localized software variants work, look and feel as expected. Localization testing is a perfect candidate for automation. It has a high potential to reduce the manual effort in testing of multiple language variants and to speed-up release cycles. However, localization testing is rarely investigated in scientific work. There are only a few reports on automation approaches for localization testing providing very little empirical results or practical advice. In this paper we describe the approach we applied for automated testing of the different localized variants of a large industrial software system, we report on the various bugs found, and we discuss our experiences and lessons learned.