What does Localization mean?

[Clair de Lune]

Software localization. What is that? Give me both in layman's term and a good professional definition.

 

[Crono]

Customizing software to suit the needs of specific area, culture, or organization.

 

[XZeroII]

Sounds like too much work. Maybe if you broke your homework down into smaller sections I'd be more inclined to take a stab at answering.

 

[LumbergTech]

US version, chinese version, polish version etc..

basically langauge stuff most of the time

it can also relate to conforming to laws in terms of content i believe

 

[DaveSimmons]

Changing the text from "American" to (an)other language(s) and handling other differences like date and currency formats, non-latin character sets and input methods for them, and in some cases right-to-left text

Behind the scenes it can require massive changes to your code if it's only set to read, process and store ASCII single-byte characters instead of multi-byte unicode.

 

[Chronoshock]

Layman: making your software work in different locales (languages/cultures/etc.)

More specifically, it's the notion of separating representation from meaning. Much like software UI design involves separating presentation from logic (ex: classic MVC design pattern), software localization involves good code design to make porting your application to new customers easy.
The most common target of localization is all purpose text. Instead of hard coding strings like "Open file" you would determine the current locale this software is operating in then determine the actual text to insert. An additional benefit is that the job of translation can given to language experts, not the programmers.
More subtle examples include semantic meaning of program images or metaphors. An example would be a picture of a furniture table as an icon for a data table in a spreadsheet app. This would be a poor choice of icon since it does not localize well since the play on words only works in some languages like American English. In German, the word for furniture table is different than the one for a data table so it would make no sense.
Another example would be left-to-right text vs right-to-left or top-to-bottom text layouts depending on the language. If the page direction is reversed, does your UI styling still make sense?

Other related concepts include branding/de-branding and accessibility. All require careful software design to ensure your program logic and presentation are not dependent on one another.

 

[MagnusTheBrewer]

It's software "solutions" geek speak for more money.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Pretty much what has been said. Often this is accomplished by never hard coding text into the app, but sending an ID then the client translates this to the text in the user's loaded language file. Also good way to save bandwidth in applications such as games. Much harder to code though as you need to keep track of all the IDs.