Internationalization is an engineering process intended to generalize a product so that it can handle multiple languages, scripts and cultural conventions without the need for redesign or recompilation. It involves a range of activities, such as:

• Prepare software distribution platforms for a global audience
• Defining mappings for currency conversion
• Defining sorting rules which change based on the current alphabet
• Defining numeric and date formatting which adapts to the current locale selected
• Discovering the language of the user's input, so that content can be displayed correctly
• Offering a default language, with the option to have the text transliterated from one language to another
• Permitting the user to select language-related user preferences
• Displaying times, dates, and calendar information in appropriate languages and formats