Many UK charities either operate overseas or have connections overseas where different languages and different alphabets are used. This goes further as different countries and cultures have different rules and names and addresses.

Therefore, it is a design principle that the system will be capable of storing names, addresses and other information in multiple character sets.

However, a further issue is about the language of the system. The pages and descriptions that users see when they use Charity Radar could be displayed in different languages. Just because we could create this feature, it doesn't follow that we should.

From a technical perspective, creating the system in multiple languages presents several challenges. The system needs to be designed with this in mind at the earlier stages and the amount of coding required is higher. Plus, all the content on all the screens needs translating to every supported language. This is not trivial.

Technical challenges should not completely dictate the features of the system. We do not want to build the easiest solution but the best solution. But it would be wrong not to be cognizant of the extra workload, extra time and extra requirement for translation in deciding on the trade-off between bringing the system to market quickly and the added benefit of multi-lingual capabilities.

The driver of the decision should not be technical but rather strategic.

The initial consideration must be one of the project scope. If it is intended to market Charity Radar to markets where the language used is not English, then multi-lingual support is necessary. Even if it is only planned to promote the product in the UK, that does not necessarily eliminate the need. As noted above, many UK charities have operations, connections and offices overseas. Some of these will be in non-English speaking geographic areas.