Global Requirements

GLOBAL

Cisco is a global company.

The company serves customers in more than 80 countries, and Cisco marketing materials are translated into 40 core languages.

Write for a global audience and assume that your document will be translated into other languages.

Even if your content is not translated or directed at a global audience, clear and concise writing will benefit all readers.

Application should be aware of user settings: preferred UI language, regional settings (date & time format, name order, decimal separator, etc.), user time zone
Users should be able to set UI language and regional preferences separately
Application must support fallback mechanism

All localizable data should be externalized to resource files: texts, images, cc, etc.
Use standard resource files when technology allows
Don’t put localized static content into databases
Don’t embed texts in images or videos: use plain image, and put a text layer on it, provide video scripts for captioning

Size the UI to accommodate the localized version of the content: leave at least 30% more space, allow UI elements such as table columns to be resized where possible
Do not mingle strings with controls, such as placing a button in the middle of a sentence
Avoid hiding or overlapping UI controls with other UI controls, for example, tables within tables or forms within tables
Set alignment margin and allow text wrapping

Regions use different formatting conventions in regards to decimal symbol, ordering of month and day in dates, name ordering, etc. International users may wrongly interpret information if it's displayed in a different convention.
Allow customers to see the data in their expected regional format (English: MM/DD/YYYY or September 19, 2015, Japan: YYYY/MM/DD or 2015年9月19日)

UI prepared for Left-To-Right (LRT) needs to be mirrored to be used in Right-To-Left (RTL) environment.
Make sure to support right to left scripts, alignment, and mirroring of the UI structure and UI elements (align:left à align:right)

Cisco Marketing and Communications Style Guide: Style and Content Guidelines	https://cisco.jiveon.com/docs/DOC-1777985#jive_content_id_Globalization https://cisco.jiveon.com/docs/DOC-51841
Brand Exchange	http://bx.cisco.com/cbx-portal/cbxshow.action
Globalization Knowledge Base	http://g11n.cisco.com/g11n/g11nkb/index.html
Internationalization Best Practices Handbook	http://g11n.cisco.com/g11n/g11nkb/index.html
Programming guidelines	http://g11n.cisco.com/g11n/g11nkb/i18nsupport/portal_guidelines.html