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Bug! Falha! Bachi! Fallo! Défaut! 程序错误!: What about Internationalization Testing in the Software Industry?

Published: 23 October 2020 Publication History

Abstract

Background. Testing is an essential activity in the software development life cycle. Nowadays, testing activities are widely spread along the software development process, since software products are continuously tested to meet the user's expectations and to compete in global markets. In this context, internationalization testing is defined as the practice focused on determining that a software works properly in a specific language and in a particular region. Aims. This study aims to explore the particularities of internationalization testing in the software industry and discuss the importance of this practice from the point of view of professionals working in this context. Method. We developed an exploratory qualitative study and conducted interviews with professionals from an international software company, in order to understand three aspects of internationalization testing: general characteristics and importance of this practice, particularities of the process, and the role of test automation in this context. Results. An amount of 13 professionals participated in this study. Results demonstrated that internationalization testing is mostly related to aspects of graphical user interfaces. In this context, truncation and mistranslations are the main faults observed, and test automation might be difficult to implement and maintain due to amount validations that are human-dependent. Conclusion. Internationalization testing is an important practice to guarantee the quality of software products developed for global markets. However, this aspect of software testing remains unpopular or unfamiliar among professionals. This study is a step forward in the process of informing and enlightening academic researchers and practitioners in industry about this theme.

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Cited By

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  • (2024)Elevating Software Quality in Agile Environments: The Role of Testing Professionals in Unit Testing2024 IEEE International Conference on Software Testing, Verification and Validation Workshops (ICSTW)10.1109/ICSTW60967.2024.00058(293-296)Online publication date: 27-May-2024
  • (2023)An industrial experience report on the challenges in training localization and internationalization testersProceedings of the 8th Brazilian Symposium on Systematic and Automated Software Testing10.1145/3624032.3624045(96-98)Online publication date: 25-Sep-2023
  • (2023)l10n-trainer: a Tool to Assist in the Training of Localization (l10n) and Internationalization (i18n) TestersProceedings of the XXXVII Brazilian Symposium on Software Engineering10.1145/3613372.3613420(277-282)Online publication date: 25-Sep-2023

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    cover image ACM Conferences
    ESEM '20: Proceedings of the 14th ACM / IEEE International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement (ESEM)
    October 2020
    412 pages
    ISBN:9781450375801
    DOI:10.1145/3382494
    Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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    Published: 23 October 2020

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    Author Tags

    1. Internationalization
    2. Localization
    3. Software Testing

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    • (2024)Elevating Software Quality in Agile Environments: The Role of Testing Professionals in Unit Testing2024 IEEE International Conference on Software Testing, Verification and Validation Workshops (ICSTW)10.1109/ICSTW60967.2024.00058(293-296)Online publication date: 27-May-2024
    • (2023)An industrial experience report on the challenges in training localization and internationalization testersProceedings of the 8th Brazilian Symposium on Systematic and Automated Software Testing10.1145/3624032.3624045(96-98)Online publication date: 25-Sep-2023
    • (2023)l10n-trainer: a Tool to Assist in the Training of Localization (l10n) and Internationalization (i18n) TestersProceedings of the XXXVII Brazilian Symposium on Software Engineering10.1145/3613372.3613420(277-282)Online publication date: 25-Sep-2023

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