Internationalization string testing

Question

Some people using look-alike Unicode symbols to replace English characters to test the internationalization, e.g. "Test" is replaced as "Ťėşŧ". Is there a wellknown name for this language/culture? Are there utils, keyboard layouts, translation tools for this "language"?

Answer 1

The name of this technique is Pseudolocalization, see the Wikipedia article here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudolocalization

Windows Vista comes with three Pseudo-Locales for testing. The "Using Pseudo-Locales for Localization Testing" MSDN article may be a good place to start.

Beyond this, any tool (beyond what you would use for regular localization, such as a translator) would depend on what platform you are developing for (and so how your data is stored).

As for keyboard layouts - any will do. But don't forget about IMEs.