Part 1. Foundations

This part covers what every later part assumes: the vocabulary of globalization, internationalization, localization and translation; how the field got from DOS code pages to continuous delivery; and the facts about characters, locales, formatted values, plurals, scripts, text growth, culture and cost that decide whether a translation can work before a translator sees it. Each chapter teaches a decision with its reasoning and traps, ends with a worked example, and states where the sources disagree.

• 101. What this part knows
• 102. What localization is: GILT, locale, and the difference between translating and adapting
• 103. A short history: from code pages and DOS to continuous delivery
• 104. Characters and encodings: Unicode, normalization and what a string is
• 105. Locales and CLDR: language tags, regions, scripts and the data behind formats
• 106. Numbers, dates, currencies and units: display conventions without changing values
• 107. Plurals, gender and message formats: CLDR categories, ICU MessageFormat, Qt %n
• 108. Scripts, text direction and fonts: bidi, shaping and rendering
• 109. Space and growth: expansion, truncation, wrapping and layout that survives translation
• 110. Culture, law and cost: what to adapt, what to leave, and what it costs