What you will learn
- Explain the rationale for both internationalization and localization
- Identify and distinguish roles of different professionals involved in internationalization and localization
- Explain different resource sourcing models used in the localization industry
- Address a broad range of internationalization challenges for digital products, from proper text encoding and use of regional formats to cultural sensitivity and awareness in the context of translation and localization
- Describe key concepts of project management in localization, including project stages and the balance between quality, schedule and cost
- Explain the peculiarities of translation in the broader context of localization and understand computer-assisted translation tools and the use of machine translation in the localization industry
- Apply quality assurance measures to internationalization and localization
How do you make sure the international audience for a software product has the best user experience possible? How do you adjust your digital marketing efforts to the peculiarities of the target audience in each market? And how do you tailor the end-to-end customer experience in a market-specific way, from pre-sales to product use to help support?
This program will teach you all that is needed to release a digital product internationally, to a global audience spread across many different local markets.
You will learn about internationalization, the preparation of software, services or websites for a release beyond its source locale. Internationalization includes the enablement of regional formats and proper encoding, as well as meeting a range of other market-specific requirements. You will find out how to plan for different markets during product design.
Then you will get introduced to localization, the process of adapting digital products to a set of specific locales or markets. This often, of course, includes translation into foreign languages, as catering for the different markets means ensuring the best language experience. It can also include the customization of features or adjusting marketing efforts by market.
Courses in this program
UWashingtonX's Internationalization and Localization Professional Certificate
- 2–5 hours per week, for 6 weeks
The first MOOC to teach internationalization and localization end to end. Learn how a digital product needs to be designed to be world-ready and how it is getting adapted to the needs of all its international target markets. This introductory course covers all the basics!
- 2–5 hours per week, for 4 weeks
Learn how a digital product becomes world-ready: how does it need to be designed for worldwide release without altering its code for each market? Who needs to be involved in which stages of the process? How do you doassure quality for world-readiness?
- 2–5 hours per week, for 6 weeks
Learn what it takes to tailor digital products for international markets through localization. See how translation works in today’s industry. Find out what other steps a localization project entails and how cost, schedule and quality are managed.
- More and more companies are either creating their own localization departments or are outsourcing to language service providers due to the desire or need to release digital products internationally.
- Accordingly, there is a growing need to employ people with expertise in internationalization and localization.
- The overall language services and technology industry is expected to see a growth of 7.4% CAGR until 2022.
Meet your instructors from University of Washington (UWashingtonX)
Experts from UWashingtonX committed to teaching online learning
Program endorsements

Microsoft’s people-centric mission cannot be realized without our localization professionals who ensure that our products are available in the languages our customers speak. The edX Professional Certificate program in Localization prepares candidates to help Microsoft achieve that mission.
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