Separating data and presentation layers for localization

Before you can localize application content into different languages you'll need to analyze the target application and the content being displayed to identify the different elements of presentation and data layers.

The presentation layer refers to the part of the content that dictates the appearance (look and feel) of the application. The presentation layer contains the assets used in the application that will remain unaffected by the language differences.

The data layer refers to the elements that will be affected by the display of different languages. The data layer contains the elements that will be the primary target of localization process.

For example, if your application has a button with a label on it, the button movie clip is in the presentation layer. The label text is part of the data layer. In the screenshot below, notice how the button's presentation layer changes when viewed in a different localization context, while the button itself (in the presentation layer) is not affected by the localization (see Figure 8).

Figure 8. Identifying the data and presentaton layers in a simple button movie clip

When you localize any application or Flash Lite content, it is the data layer that is affected by the localization. For this reason, it is a best practice to separate the two layers in order to streamline the localization process.

Flash Lite provides many options to separate the two layers. For example, you can use external data by loading it in from text files, XML files or from URL-encoded strings obtained from server-side scripts such ASP/PHP (which fetch the data from a database and feed it to the Flash Lite application). This approach makes it rather easy to edit the data to be represented in Flash Lite application without re-publishing the SWF in the Flash authoring program. Using external data also helps when you plan hiring a third- party translator to translate the application data into different languages who does not have experience working with Flash (see Figure 9).

Figure 9. When you load external data programmatically, you make it easier to translate the text for the application

You may encounter situations where you need to use different images in the context of different languages. Imagine that you have two different versions of the same content and the topic of the message is saving money. The Hindi version is targeting users from India, so to the application displays Indian rupees as the image that stands for currency. The English version is targeting users in the United States, so the application displays dollars to represent the currency (see Figure 10).

Figure 10. External image data can be dynamically displayed based on the language that is being presented

When you are working with an application that requires region-specific images as part of the localization, it is a best practice to ensure that any non-textual elements and image assets are treated as a data layer.  This means region-specific graphics should be kept separate from the presentation layer. You can do this by dynamically loading the images from an external source instead of embedding the images into the Flash Lite movie.

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