Published:
The move towards global standardisation in models such as the Generic Statistical Business Process Model (GSBPM) and the Generic Statistical Information Model (GSIM), combined with progress on the development of standards for exchanging data and metadata, has drawn the attention of statistical software providers to the possibilities of exchanging software internationally. This has prompted the question of how we can actively incorporate this possibility into the development of software from its inception.Statistical software is often developed in the national context; multi-lingual support can be an afterthought. Adding support for other languages later is often much more difficult if language is not considered as a key part of the software architecture from the start.
However, there is more to building software that will be used in many countries than just focussing on language issues alone. Adhering to best practices in internationalising software means that the possibilities for sharing data within the statistical community are increased. The implementation of these guidelines will increase the portability and reuse of software.
The purposes of these guidelines are to provide a review some of the common best practices to develop internationalised software, to highlight some of the resources and common standards in the area and to focus on topics that may specifically apply to statistical software such as the treatment of numbers, formatting, dates, formula treatment, and notation.
Download:
Principles and Guidelines on Building Multilingual Applications for Official Statistics (174 KB)