Master A Heuristic Evaluation of Multilingual Lom ba rdy : Museums' Web Sites MINACAPILLI, Carmen Ambra Abstract The compliance with localisation standards and guidelines ensures the usability and suitability of web sites to multilingual and multicultural audiences. Considering the importance of cultural tourism in Italy, a web site that is usable and suitable to both local and international users can have a positive impact on visitors. From the general perception that localised versions present some limitations stems the decision to analyse and compare Italian and English home pages of museums web sites in one Italian region-Lombardy. The aim of this paper is to test whether Italian and English home pages respect usability guidelines and whether localisation has a negative impact on usability. Through the heuristic evaluation methodology, this paper presents a descriptive and critical analysis of aspects related to internationalisation, localisation, search in the web site, SEO and web accessibility in the two linguistic versions. Results show that over half of the home pages respect most of the usability guidelines checked, with differences between the two linguistic versions. Reference MINACAPILLI, Carmen Ambra. A Heuristic Evaluation of Multilingual Lom ba rdy : Museums' Web Sites. Master : Univ. Genève, 2018 Available at: http://archive-ouverte.unige.ch/unige:112073 Disclaimer: layout of this document may differ from the published version. 1 / 1 Carmen Ambra Minacapilli A Heuristic Evaluation of Multilingual Lombardy Museums’ Web Sites Directrice : Lucía Morado Vázquez Juré : Paolo Canavese Mémoire présenté à la Faculté de traduction et d’interprétation (Département de traitement informatique multilingue) pour l’obtention de la Maîtrise universitaire en traduction, men- tion technologies de la traduction. Université de Genève Année académique 2017-2018 Août 2018 J’affirme avoir pris connaissance des documents d’information et de prévention du plagiat émis par l’Université de Genève et la Faculté de traduction et d’interprétation (notamment la Directive en matière de plagiat des étudiant-e-s, le Règlement d’études de la Faculté de traduction et d’interprétation ainsi que l’Aide-mémoire à l’intention des étudiants préparant un mémoire de Ma en traduction). J’atteste que ce travail est le fruit d’un travail personnel et a été rédigé de manière autonome. Je déclare que toutes les sources d’information utilisées sont citées de manière complète et précise, y compris les sources sur Internet. Je suis consciente que le fait de ne pas citer une source ou de ne pas la citer correctement est constitu- tif de plagiat et que le plagiat est considéré comme une faute grave au sein de l’Université, passible de sanctions. Au vu de ce qui précède, je déclare sur l’honneur que le présent travail est original. Nom et prénom : Minacapilli, Carmen Ambra Lieu / date / signature : Varese, le 14 juillet 2018 Acknowledgements First and foremost, I offer my sincere gratitude to my supervisor, Lucía Morado Vázquez, who has en- couraged me with her kindness through the learning process of this Master thesis and guided my work with her knowledge and expertise, whilst allowing me the freedom to develop my own research. Her engagement in localisation and her genuinely positive attitude towards students made me happy to be guided by her in the final accomplishment of my career as a student. I would like to thank my co-supervisor, Paolo Canavese, for the time and dedication in reading and correcting my work, and Jeanette Pidanick on behalf of Nielsen Norman Group for allowing me to reproduce the figure from Nielsen (1993). My gratitude also goes to Violeta Seretan, for her precious help and guidance in both statistics and academic writing. This Master thesis is heartily dedicated to my father Filippo and my mother Teresa, for their example of love, courage and hope. I do not have words to express my thank you for your unconditional support and caring attentions, despite all we have been through this year. Thank you is just a word to tell you that I truly owe you everything. If my thanks can be of any use, I would like to thank my dad for teaching me courage and optimism and my mum for teaching me hope and gratitude, however difficult life may seem. In my daily work, I have been blessed with friendly and cheerful family and friends. My special thanks goes to my cousin Giada, because she makes everything seem possible, and my friend Sofia, because she constantly reminds me what dreams are made of. I would also like to thank the international mobility office of University of Geneva and Moscow State Linguistic University for giving me the opportunity to study in Moscow, “a true moment of blissful happiness” in Dostoevsky’s words. As conclusion, this work was written in the loving memory of my aunt Barbara, my first and most sincere friend, whose love taught me that trees must develop deep roots to let flowers grow. 2 Abstract The compliance with localisation standards and guidelines ensures the usability and suitability of web sites to multilingual and multicultural audiences. Considering the importance of cultural tourism in Italy, a web site that is usable and suitable to both local and international users can have a positive impact on visitors. From the general perception that localised versions present some limitations stems the decision to analyse and compare Italian and English home pages of museums web sites in one Italian region— Lombardy. The aim of this paper is to test whether Italian and English home pages respect usability guidelines and whether localisation has a negative impact on usability. Through the heuristic evaluation methodology, this paper presents a descriptive and critical analysis of aspects related to internationalisa- tion, localisation, search in the web site, SEO and web accessibility in the two linguistic versions. Results show that over half of the home pages respect most of the usability guidelines checked, with differences between the two linguistic versions. The usability problems identified in this paper show that English pages present more errors than Italian pages. In both versions, there is room for improvement for what concerns the aspects studied. Keywords Localisation – usability – usability guidelines – heuristic evaluation – museum – web site – home page – Lombardy 3 Table of Contents Chapter 1: Introduction ........................................................................................................................................... 6 Chapter 2: The Literature Review .......................................................................................................................... 9 2.1 From Translation to Localisation .................................................................................................................... 9 2.1.1 Translation: Definition and Strategies ................................................................................................. 9 2.1.2 Localisation: Components and Definitions ...................................................................................... 10 2.2 Web Localisation: Process and Tendencies ................................................................................................. 16 2.2.1 The Web Localisation Process (GILT): Globalisation and Internationalisation ....................... 16 2.2.2 Web Localisation Tendencies: Standardisation vs. Customisation .............................................. 18 2.3 Web Design: Usability and Acceptability ..................................................................................................... 21 2.3.1 Web Usability: Definition and Components .................................................................................... 24 2.3.2 Usability Assessment Methods: Web Usability Testing ................................................................. 26 Summary ................................................................................................................................................................... 30 Chapter 3: Presentation of Research Method and Tool ................................................................................... 31 3.1 Research Questions and Hypotheses ............................................................................................................ 31 3.2 Heuristic Evaluation Method ......................................................................................................................... 35 3.2.1 From broad Heuristics to Guidelines and Standards ..................................................................... 39 3.3 Heuristic Guidelines: A Tool for Heuristic Evaluation ............................................................................. 41 3.3.1 Group 1. Aspects related to source code .......................................................................................... 42 3.3.2 Group 2. Aspects related to localisation ........................................................................................... 46 3.3.3 Group 3. Aspects related to visual elements .................................................................................... 53 3.3.4 Group 4. Aspects affecting search in the web site .......................................................................... 56 3.3.5 Group 5. Aspects affecting the web sites ranking in search engines ........................................... 59 3.4 Limitations of the Heuristic Tool .................................................................................................................