developing international sites...

excellent article from Molly E. Holzschlag

from the article:

While interest in web accessibility has increased over the past several years, another, quieter interest area has been just as important to making sites available to more people. Internationalization is a word most of us have heard, but that few understand.

Internationalization, which is often written shorthand as i18n (first letter, 18 letters, last letter), refers to the practice of designing and developing a product, application, or document in a way that makes it easily localized for target audiences that vary in culture, region, or language.