The world wide web brings with it the implied promise of instant access to a multinational, multilingual marketplace. Traditional access to "foreign" markets has been limited by distance, expense and expertise. With many of the traditional barriers falling to new technology, how difficult can it really be to instantly go global?

This tutorial will examine the creation of local-language software from the ground up. Participants will be introduced to the jargon of the industry (just what is g18n, anyway?), the business case for going global and the process and pitfalls of getting there. A sample project will be explored - from conception, working with translation vendors and on through deployment; giving an overview of the entire process end-to-end. Concepts and tools such as Unicode will be covered as they relate to common problems and their solutions.

This session will be useful for anyone new to internationalization/localization work, or anyone whose prior experience has only been in a single phase of the entire process. Participants will be left with a high level understanding of the various roles within the globalization/internationalization/localization team, the tools used to accomplish the project, and how all pieces of the project combine to meet the business objective of increased revenue and market share from localized software.