Tag(s): tr-its2req

After discussing requirements at a dedicated workshop in June, the MultilingualWeb-LT Working Group has published a first public working draft of Internationalization Tag Set (ITS ) 2.0.

ITS 2.0 responds to needs that emerged since the creation of ITS 1.0 in 2007. First, ITS 2.0 focuses on HTML5. We can expect that huge amounts of Web content will be produced using HTML5 in the future, and ITS 2.0 will provide the means to properly internationalize and localize HTML5, using both human translation or language technologies like machine translation.

In addition, ITS 2.0 builds bridges to the Semantic Web area, by providing mechanisms to re-use ITS metadata (so-called “data categories”) with RDF.

Finally, ITS 2.0 defines new data categories that are demanded by the localization and language technology communities.

The development of this first draft of ITS 2.0 would not have been possible without the MultilingualWeb project: via MultilingualWeb, stakeholders of quite diverse communities have provided input to the initial metadata definitions. The W3C Internationalization Activity is now the place for these communities to move that metadata and its implementations forward.

We very much welcome feedback also from outside the Working Group – see issues discussed within the Working Group. Please send your comments to public-multilingualweb-lt-comments@w3.org. Use “ITS 2.0 WD Comment” at the beginning the subject line of your email, and add something descriptive after it. The archives for this list are publicly available.

Editors: Dave Lewis (TCD), Arle Lommel (DFKI), Felix Sasaki (DFKI/W3C Fellow), Jirka Kosek (UEP)

Over the past five years since its release in 2007 the Internationalization Tag Set (ITS) has shown itself to be a very powerful tool for simplifying the translation of XML content, but a lot has changed since then as improved technologies to support translation have emerged and we have seen greater levels of integration between content production and translation. As a result new needs have emerged and the W3C’s MultilingualWeb-LT Working Group was formed to develop ITS version 2.0 (ITS 2.0) to respond to these needs.

Requirements for Internationalization Tag Set (ITS) 2.0 gathers metadata categories – essentially items like ways to indicate whether or not specific text should be translated, support for machine translation, and so forth – developed within the MultilingualWeb-LT Working Group. The proposed metadata targets web content (primarily HTML5) and “deep Web” content, such as content stored in a content management system (CMS) or XML files from which HTML pages are generated, that facilitates its interaction with multilingual technologies and localization processes.

In order to ensure that the proposed metadata categories reflect the needs of the organizations that produce and translate content, interested parties should review the document and send comments to public-multilingualweb-lt-comments@w3.org. (You can also join the public discussion list and view its archive). We also invite you to review the issues discussed within the Working Group.

We will discuss the draft at the upcoming MultilingualWeb workshop and plan to publish a new version of the document incorporating public feedback by the end of June 2012, followed by a first draft publication of the ITS 2.0 specification.

(If you are interested in taking a more active role in working on ITS 2.0 you may also register for the Dublin workshop, at no fee, until May 30. See the call for participation for more details.)

Editors: Dave Lewis (TCD), Arle Lommel (DFKI), Felix Sasaki (DFKI/W3C Fellow)