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Internationalization

This topic is part of Global Deployment Terminology.

Internationalization includes designing software to handle and display data, such as text, diagrams, and numbers, according to the orthography or rules of the language as used in a particular locale. Internationalization is often abbreviated as I18N, because there are 18 characters between the initial I and the terminal N.

The software might have to input, display, and print characters, sort text, and recognize numbers and dates in different formats, and display and print text right-to-left as well as left-to right. Therefore, certain engineering features must be incorporated into the code to handle these requirements.

Developing an internationalized program means that the feature and code designs do not make assumptions based on a single language or locale and that the source code base simplifies the creation of different language editions of a program.

Internationalization Features

Some aspects of internationalization include:

• A base version enabled for international environments
• Localizable items separated from the core functionality on which they are running
• Software that takes advantage of supporting platforms, such as the Windows operating systems and the database platform the software is running on

Your Siebel Business Applications have been internationalized. Specific features include:

• A base version, enabled for international environments
• Support for localization built into the data model
• Support for separate language-specific modules (where necessary)

  For example, some resource library files (such as DLL files) are language-independent, while other such files are language-dependent. In general, language-dependent files are located in language-specific installation directories.

• Euro (€) currency support
• String, number, and date handling
• Support for multilingual user data, such as:
  • Multilingual picklists (MLOV seed data)
  • Multilingual data for product- and catalog-related entities
• Support for major Unicode and non-Unicode (traditional) character sets

  For a list of the languages supported by Siebel Business Applications, and the supported code pages for each database, see 1513102.1 (Article ID) on My Oracle Support.

• The ability to support both left-to-right and right-to-left displays, referred to as bidirectionality