A Practical Guide to Localization UX
Designing interfaces that work in other languages and regions, including text expansion, date and number formats, right-to-left layouts and cultural conventions.
Priya Raghunathan
The key figures
- Text expansion
- translations are often longer than English
- Right-to-left
- Arabic and Hebrew layouts mirror direction
- Formats
- dates, numbers and currencies vary by region
- Language selection
- users should be able to choose their language
Why this is worth getting right
Designs made for English often break when translated, and localization problems damage trust in new markets.
Do this, not that
Do
- Design layouts that allow text to grow
- Avoid text in images
- Use locale-aware formatting
- Test with real translations early
- Let users switch language easily
Don’t
- Fixed-width buttons that clip translations
- Flags as the only language indicator
- Concatenated strings that break grammar
- Assuming location equals language
When to bring in help
Our advice Bring in help when launching in new countries or languages.
Where this comes from
- W3C — Internationalization techniques: authoring HTML and CSS
- Material Design — Bidirectionality
The figures and practices above come from the sources listed.
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Where to go next
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