Globalization Plan - Resource Bundles

A resource bundle is a collection of key/value combinations used to translate text data throughout the site. This functions in much the same way that our current Legal component does except that it separates out key/value combinations into locale specific bundles and does not require a knowledge of ColdFusion to maintain (in many respects, the current translation spreadsheets are similar to resource bundles though not directly usable within ColdFusion). In addition, the use of resource bundles open up the possibility of using tools such as IBM's RB Manager to manage building and maintaining resource bundles. There are also pre-built tools available that are both free and open-source to assist in implementing resource bundles in ColdFusion.A major roadblock in the way of implementing globalization using resource bundles on our current sites is that the existing sites generally have very limited use of text. As explained above, resource bundles were designed to facilitate localizing common text items on a page and are not designed to manage localized images, but there are other issues with a heavy reliance on images (and Flash to a certain extent).

However, the extensive use of images for design, navigation and content presents longer term maintenance issues as well. It requires the creation, storage and management of an entirely independent set of assets for each language. In practice, this means that a simple change can require the opening, modifying and exporting of a PSD for every location that a site supports. This is manageable on a small scale, but the problem is obvious when we are discussing 20+ languages.