W3C I18n Checker

About the W3C Internationalization (i18n) Checker

Getting internationalization features right at the beginning saves a lot of time and trouble if you ever need to use your content in a language-sensitive way in the future. However, the test will also throw up issues that could cause you problems straight away, such as those related to character encodings and to non-normalized class and id names.

About this service
References and other resources
Credits

About this service

The W3C Internationalization Checker is a free service by the W3C that provides:

a table listing key international settings for a page, such as character encoding, language declarations, and text direction.
a list of errors, warnings and helpful suggestions about the page, with pointers to resources where you can learn more.

The reports take into account both markup and HTTP headers, which can be particularly useful for troubleshooting problems. The advice given in the checker reports considers how your HMTL pages (ie. files served as text/html) will behave in a modern browser, rather than just validating against a particular version of the standard. The advice is tailored to suit files served as application/xhtml+xml for aspects relating to character encoding and language declaration.

Please let us know about bugs and missing features using the feedback form. A list of current checks run by the checker is available.

This software is licensed under the terms of the W3C Software and Document Notice and License. The source code is available on GitHub.

References and other resources

Relevant activities

The W3C's Internationalization Activity works with W3C working groups and liaises with other organizations to make it possible to use Web technologies with different languages, scripts, and cultures. It also provides articles and other resources about Web internationalization.
The Internationalization Interest Group operates via a set of public mailing lists supporting the activity of the Internationalization Working Groups. Anyone can participate in the Interest Group by simply joining the mailing list.

Online Tools & Other Validators

The Internationalization Activity section of the W3C site points to some internationalization-related tools.

In addition to this checker, the W3C offers a number of other tools to help you check various types of documents (HTML, XHTML, CSS, RDF, P3P, ...), find broken links in your Web pages, and so on. All these tools are listed on the W3C's QA Toolbox.

The W3C also hosts a number of other Open Source software projects.

Credits

R. Ishida is maintaining the checker at the W3C, using a code base developed with the help of Thomas Gambet.

W3C Internationalization Checker