Localizability Testing & Pseudolocalization

Pseudolocalization is the process of verifying application readiness to be translated.
It verifies that the application UI can be easily localized to any language without making source code modifications.
Since localizability bugs have to be fixed in the source code, they must be searched at the beginning of the translation process, so this tool allows you to avoid necessity of fixing bugs for every language version at a later point.

Test Your Application Localizability

Pseudolocalization Method:*

This will keep the text readable, and non-modified text will catch your attention.
Example: A -> Ã, E -> È, U -> Ũ etc.
This will help you test your application's ability to deal with two-byte characters, encoding and locale.
This will make finding places where the program utilizes ANSI functions to process or display text. Having those markers, you'll easily see when text is built at run-time - potential source of localizability bugs.
Example: Some text -> $Some text$. In many cases translated text is longer then the English original the length will also increase.
English is one of the most compact languages: what is usually depicted as "OK" in English becomes "Aceptado" in Spanish, for example.

Crowdin Project: *

Modifications:
Pre-text characters:
Post-text characters:

Important Notes

If you take pseudo-localization very seriously, you'll need to test pseudolocalized input as well (say, try to submit Japanese texts instead of English).

Remember about culture specific numeric, dates and currency formatting.

Validate all dialog boxes. Verify tree structure, list boxes, other controls in various resolutions with pseudolocalized texts.

Why is it important?

Waiting for the application to be completely localized via community or LSP can bring a significant lag into the translation testing schedule. In addition, it may not be cost-effective to translate UI text at the beginning of the development cycle, as it might change and need to be retranslated. Here, pseudolocalization can be the best option, as no real translation is needed.