Category: w3cXMLCore

On November 5th, Christian Lieske and Felix Sasaki gave a talk entitled Standards-based Translations with W3C ITS and OASIS XLIFF at TCWorld, Wiesbaden, Germany.

The slides are in PDF. The presentation describes ITS and XLIFF, the two standards which are important for proper internationalization and localization of XML. Topics include a discussion of general benefits of standards-based internationalization and localization, an introduction to both standards and how they help to achieve such benefits, and an explanation of the relation between the two. A highlight was the introduction of a tool for round-tripping from an XML-document with ITS information to XLIFF, and the integration of translated material from XLIFF back into the original XML. [search keys: talk-2009 talk-sasaki] talk-lieske]

The major change was the addition of detailed information about use of CSS selectors with xml:lang, but there were many other edits (see the list below). Translators should consider retranslating the whole tutorial. [search keys: qa-css-lang]

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Comments are being sought on this article prior to final release. Please send any comments to www-international@w3.org (subscribe). We expect to publish a final version in one to two weeks. [search keys: qa-choosing-language-tags]

This tutorial was updated to incorporate changes made to BCP 47 by the recent publication of RFC 5646. Changes to BCP 47 include the introduction of extended language subtags, and the addition of ISO 639-3 language subtags, bringing the total number of subtags in the registry to almost 8,000.

Translators should consider retranslating the whole tutorial. [search keys: article-language-tags]

On 1st October, Unicode 5.2 was released! The data files, code charts, and Unicode Standard Annexes for this version are final and are posted on the Unicode site.

For Unicode 5.2, the core specification is no longer just a delta document applied to the book; instead, the entire core specification,with all textual changes integrated, will be available on the Unicode site. As of this announcement, the first five chapters are available; the other chapters will follow soon

For full details about what is new or changed in this release, see the version documentation for Unicode 5.2.

The IETF has published RFC 5646, an update of Tags for Identifying Languages. This specification obsoletes former RFCs 4646, 3066 and 1766.

RFC 5646 makes it possible to use over 7,000 three-letter ISO 639-3 language codes, in addition to the 2 letter codes that have been in use for some time. It also introduces 220 'extended language' subtags, mainly for backwards compatibility.

It continues to be best to refer to this specification as BCP47. This is a non-changing name and web address that points to the latest relevant RFCs.

The Internationalization Working Group at the W3C is working on an article to help users choose language tags, given the various types of subtag that are now available, and the sheer number of subtags.

You can look up language and other subtags in the IANA Language Subtag Registry.

FAQ-based article: If I'm unable to use markup to correctly order bidirectional text, what can I do?

By Richard Ishida, W3C. [search key: qa-bidi-unicode-controls]

This article was revised substantially.

Translators should consider retranslating the whole article. [search keys: article-inline-bidi-markup]

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Comments are being sought on this article prior to final release. Please send any comments to www-international@w3.org (subscribe). We expect to publish a final version in one to two weeks. [search keys: qa-bidi-unicode-controls]

The Okapi Framework Team has announced the first milestone of its Java-based products. The framework provides cross-platform and open-source components and applications for localization tasks.

One of the components in this release is an XML filter based on an implementation of the W3C Internationalization Tag Set (ITS) Recommendation.

The filter allows access to the translatable content of an XML document, based on any external or internal global rules, as well as local rules. The ITS processor provided supports the following data categories: Translate, Localization Note, Element Within Text, Terminology, Directionality, and Language Information.

Rainbow, an Okapi application, uses the filter to extract and merge translatable content to and from XLIFF. Many other utilities provided in the framework take advantage of the ITS-based filter as well, for example to perform pseudo-translation.

You can download the Okapi components and get their source code.