Abstract
Web application internationalization frameworks allow businesses to more easily market and sell their products and services around the world. However, internationalization can lead to problems. Text expansion and contraction after translation may result in a distortion of the layout of the translated versions of a webpage, which can reduce their usability and aesthetics. In this paper, we investigate and report on the frequency and severity of different types of failures in webpages' user interfaces that are due to internationalization. In our study, we analyzed 449 real world internationalized webpages. Our results showed that internationalization failures occur frequently and they range significantly in terms of severity and impact on the web applications. These findings motivate and guide future work in this area.