“As a Church, we believe there is value in teaching the gospel in the languages of the earth, because your mother tongue is the language of your heart.” – Elder John H. Groberg, of the Seventy Not only must the Church teach in all the languages of the earth, it must also build software for use by local leaders and members in all the languages. Building global software that adapts to various cultures and languages adds many challenges to the work. One of the most important and challenging parts is handling the names of members in a culturally appropriate way. For example, when you receive e-mail with your name incorrectly displayed, the tendency is to discount it as spam. If your product hard-codes American name customs, which are not appropriate in other cultures, it may be discounted, laughed at, or even be offensive. In one extreme case, it could have been harmful to a member. In a country with civil unrest, the member’s name had been written with characters from a different ethnic group. The membership record was sent back with a note explaining that this would identify him with the wrong ethnic group and his life would be in danger. Handling names and dates correctly are two of the major issues that must be addressed when building global software. Externalizing strings, data corruption or characters not displaying properly in displayed strings are additional issues that must be overcome. While working on MLS for the last five years, I have come across these issues as well as others. Read more. (http://tech.lds.org/index.php?option=com_content task=view id=386 Itemid=1)
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