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196 Reinhard Schälerdemand for higher throughput at lower cost. Yet, to-date, no concerted effortshave been undertaken to create a robust infrastructure for the localisation industrycomprising language data and tools coupled to process automation and based onwidely accepted standards.When did you try the last time to break your existing localisation process?What was the last “wow!” experience you had as a localiser? Different professionalswould answer these questions in slightly different ways, but most would agreethat it has been a long time since mainstream localisation “wisdom” was seriouslychallenged.In this chapter, we will attempt to do just that.1.1 Important definitionsTwo terms usually associated with localisation are internationalisation and globalisation.Wedefineinternationalisation as the process of designing (or modifying)software so as to isolate the linguistically and culturally dependent parts of an application,as well as the development of a system that allows linguistic and culturaladaptation supporting users working in different languages and cultures. By contrast,we define globalisation in this context as a business strategy (not so muchas an activity) addressing the issues associated with taking a product to the globalmarket which also includes world-wide marketing, sales and support.Probably the most difficult distinction to make, however, is that between localisationand translation. Not just localisers, translators as well adapt products (text)linguistically and culturally so that they can be understood in different locales.However, translation does not necessarily deal with digital material whereas localisationis always happening in the digital world. This has a number of implicationsin a number of different areas.Firstly, the material localisers deal with is multimodal, i.e., the files they localisecan contain text, graphics, audio and video applied to a large variety ofservices or products, from websites to desktop applications, video games andcourseware.Secondly, the digital nature of the material determines the process (analysis,pre-processing, translation automation, testing, engineering), the tools andtechnologies, the release and distribution, as well as a number of very specificchallenges which are all quite different from those encountered in traditionaltranslation. These include:– File formats (huge variety, ever growing number)– Encoding, fonts, rendering (dependent on standards; sometimes difficult toimplement; not always available)– Input methods (keyboard, mouse, scanner, speech)