Knowledge Base Overview

When we discuss support of (native) languages in programing and of course web pages we usually bump into i18n and l10n.

The two acronyms or abbreviations are used a lot because we need these two words a lot and this is what they mean or actually stand for:

• Internationalization
• Localization

Now that we know what i18n and l10n stands for you may wonder why are they used for these two long words when we discuss language support.

Programmers (people) are lazy

Because we use these words a lot and especially programmers are used to avoid duplication and long unnecessary strings an abbreviation was required. Maybe it wasn't just programmers and everybody was tired of writing these long words over and over again.

The abbreviation looks a little bit weird at first but when we look at only the numbers and think long and hard enough it is simple and obvious.

We use only the first and last letter of each word, and count then replace the intermediate letters by their number telling how many letters there are.

internationalization is a string with 20 characters

i + 18 + n = i18n

localization is a string with 12 characters

l + 10 + n = l10n

That's all, simple once you know it!