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Localization and internationalization, what’s the difference?

I18n/L10n/G11n all equal localization to me, but people keep making distinctions among these, especially in corporate and marketing, but I’m failing to see how these 3 tasks, from the programmer’s point of view aren’t the same thing, are there special requirements behind each one of these? What is some honest programmer to programmer explanations of these terms that doesn’t involve global markets, in other words what’s the nitty-gritty differences behind these three terms, when translated to developing (coding) software?

thanks!

Answer 1

Here’s an article from the W3C: Localization vs. Internationalization

The short answer from them seems to be:

Localization refers to the adaptation of a product, application or document content to meet the language, cultural and other requirements of a specific target market (a ‘locale’).

Internationalization is the design and development of a product, application or document content that enables easy localization for target audiences that vary in culture, region, or language.

So, it seems that internationalization is making the product able to be localized to a specific market. According to the W3C, globalization is another term for internationalization.

Personally, I use them mostly interchangeably but check out the article for more specificity of what each entails.