StarWest 2006 presentation - Testing for Global Customers

I recently presented a talk on a globalization testing; a topic I think is really interesting, yet I find that most people try to ignore the topic for various reasons. I think that when people start talking about globalization or internationalization testing, some testers and developers shut down mentally. I have heard some devs and testers say, "I don't know how to read Japanese, so how can I test it?"

Well, after years of working in this area I discovered that a tester doesn't have to know how to read, speak, or write another language in order to conduct testing which includes string data composed of characters from different language groups. The computer doesn't know language, it simply knows a series of 0's and 1's. The glyphs which represent characters used in some written language is for human edification, but the computer really doesn't know the difference between Greek, Russian, or Japanese.

I have been trying to convince testers for years to expand their input testing beyond the typical ASCII characters they see on the keyboard in front of them and include characters from various languages such as Japanese and Arabic, and Hindi. While most testers think this is really cool, I think we sometimes forget how to input Unicode characters from different language groups.

So, to solve that problem I have created a few job aids that provide step-by-step instructions to manually input characters and strings from different languages other than English. So, for those of you looking to expand your string testing capabilities please refer to the job aids I created on my new (work in progress) personal website Software Testing Mentor. The slides for the talk are also available in the Presentations section, but the simulations and examples used during the presentation are not yet posted. Also, I will add more job aids for Chinese, Korean, and Hebrew in the near future.