Internationalisation: the work done before any language exists
Internationalisation is the engineering that makes adding a language possible: text held separately from code, layouts that survive longer words, dates and numbers that follow a setting. It is invisible when it has been done and obvious when it has not. As of 2026-09-22.
| Preparation | Visible when present | Visible when absent |
|---|---|---|
| Text held outside the code | No | Untranslated fragments in a page |
| Layouts that stretch | No | Clipped buttons in longer languages |
| Direction-aware layout | No | A mirrored script in an unmirrored page |
| Formatting by setting | No | Dates and numbers in one convention only |
Inclusion rule. The preparations that make a language addable, with the symptom each one produces when it is missing. Order. Most common preparation first.
1It is the reason a language can be added at all
A product with its text baked into its code cannot gain a language without being rewritten. One with its text held separately gains one by translating a file, which is why the first language is expensive and the ninth is not.
That explains a pattern visible in this register: declared sets cluster at two codes, five, nine and thirteen rather than being spread evenly. Companies do the groundwork once and then add markets in batches.
2Nothing about it is declarable
There is no markup for this. A reader cannot count it, cannot see it from outside, and can only infer its absence from symptoms on a page that has already been translated.
So it appears in this register as a term rather than as a column. What the site column measures is the result of the groundwork having been done, which is the closest observable proxy.
3The symptoms are worth a spot check
A clipped button, a date in one convention, a fragment left in the source language: those are visible on any translated page and take seconds to notice. They say more about how a translation is maintained than a count does.
Two spot checks appear in this register and both came back clean. That is thin evidence and it is more than a count of declarations provides on its own.
A definition, not a measurement: no vendor figure appears here that is not also in the register. What each spot check looked at is recorded on the vendor entry it belongs to.
Nearby terms: Localisation, Language tag. The whole vocabulary is at terms; nothing on this page is a claim about a named product.