ABSTRACT
Localization involves complex technological, textual, communicative and cognitive translational processes that introduce modifications to source interactive digital texts with the goal of rendering them usable in linguistic and socio-cultural contexts other than those of production. Localization emerged in the context of software development for personal computing in the late 1970s and early 1980s in the United States. Landmark developments such as the emergence of the World Wide Web in the 1990s, the gaming revolution and the mobile revolution in the 2000s further transformed the localization industry. Web localization requires a lower level of technological competence from intervening participants than software localization. The mobile and social network revolution and the emergence of server-based cloud technologies impacted the development of the localization industry since the late twentieth century. Development localization takes a long view of the impact of localization on society and attempts to “bridge social divides”, “provide equal access to electronic information” and ensure “linguistic and cultural diversity”.
