When we first meet with a client, our goal is to get a big-picture understanding of what the client is trying to accomplish. Beyond the technical considerations, we want to understand their immediate and long-term business goals for globalizing their website.

The next step is a review of the current site and the systems driving it. This is a full content and systems review to assess and quantify the work required. The work is broken down according to a rough project plan that will ultimately form the basis for our quotation.

All of this information is assembled into a detailed proposal and quotation.

This is a standard project planning phase. Client- and inlingua-side timelines and deliverables are established. An inlingua project manager assembles a technical and linguistic team, including client-side technical, linguistic and in-country contacts.

Major milestones for the project include the last four major phases listed in this process: internationalization, localization, testing and quality control, and delivery. A project plan sign-off initiates the formal project.

The first technical step towards the globalization of a site is the internationalization of the components: GUI, databases, scripts and applications.

All GUI elements are modified to allow for word growth and globalized to the greatest extent possible. Depending on the client's goals, the systems supporting the site are modified to accommodate any future localization effort. New fields may be added to track region-specific preferences of site visitors, etc. Scripts and applications are modified so that they don't fail when validating date, currency and numerical formats that they aren't currently prepared to handle.

All translatable content that is visible to the user is moved to resource files.

All linguistic and technical issues for the site are generalized so that they are ready to be localized into any language without further re-design.

Once this phase is complete, the internationalized English site is tested and quality checked before localization begins.

Any location-specific engineering is done at this level. The GUI is localized and checked for color, images and use of icons and graphics.

The content is translated, edited and proofread by inlingua, then checked and signed off by the client.

Each localized version of the site is tested on native-language platforms and browsers. GUI cleanup issues and punch list items are handled. A full linguistic review is performed.

Delivery
Web-ready site is delivered to the client. Maintenance issues and any open items are discussed with client. A full project debriefing is done with a joint inlingua-client team.