W3C

Site Navigation


Internationalization (All)

This page summarizes the relationships among specifications, whether they are finished standards or drafts. Below, each title links to the most recent version of a document. For related introductory information, see: Internationalization, Protocol and Meta Format Considerations, XML Essentials.

Completed Work

W3C Recommendations have been reviewed by W3C Members, by software developers, and by other W3C groups and interested parties, and are endorsed by the Director as Web Standards. Learn more about the W3C Recommendation Track.

Group Notes are not standards and do not have the same level of W3C endorsement.

Standards

2007-04-03

Internationalization Tag Set (ITS) Version 1.0

translations · errata

A set of recommendations for data categories that can be mapped to elements and attributes to support the internationalization and localization of marked up content. Implementations are provided for DTDs, XML Schema and Relax NG, and for existing vocabularies like XHTML, DocBook and OpenDocument.

2005-02-15

Character Model for the World Wide Web 1.0: Fundamentals

translations · errata

Architectural Specification building on Unicode to provide authors of specifications, software developers, and content developers with a common reference for interoperable text handling on the World Wide Web.

2001-05-31

Ruby Annotation

translations · errata

"Ruby" are short runs of text alongside the base text, typically used in East Asian documents to indicate pronunciation or to provide a short annotation. This specification defines markup for ruby, in the form of an XHTML module.

Group Notes

2013-01-24

Unicode in XML and other Markup Languages

Provides guidelines on the use of the Unicode Standard in conjunction with markup languages such as XML.

2012-04-03

Requirements for Japanese Text Layout

Describes requirements for general Japanese layout realized with technologies like CSS, SVG and XSL-FO. The document is mainly based on a standard for Japanese layout, JIS X 4051, however, it also addresses areas which are not covered by JIS X 4051.

2011-07-05

Working with Time Zones

This document contains guidelines and best practices for working with time and time zones in applications and document formats.

2009-09-15

Requirements for String Identity Matching and String Indexing

This document was written as the first step towards a character model for W3C specifications. The views expressed have evolved over the intervening years, and the document was re-published purely to preserve the historical record.

2009-09-08

Authoring HTML: Handling Right-to-left Scripts

Provides HTML/XHTML authors with best practice for developing internationalized HTML supported by CSS to create pages for languages that use bidirectional text, such as Arabic and Hebrew.

2008-11-03

Legacy extended IRIs for XML resource identification

translations

For historic reasons, some formats have allowed variants of IRIs that are somewhat less restricted in syntax, for example XML system identifiers and W3C XML Schema anyURIs. This document provides a definition and a name (Legacy Extended IRI or LEIRI) for these variants for easy reference.

2008-02-13

Best Practices for XML Internationalization

translations

Provides a set of guidelines for developing XML documents and schemas that are properly internationalized, aimed at both developers of XML applications and authors of XML content.

2007-04-12

Internationalization Best Practices: Specifying Language in XHTML & HTML Content

Provides HTML/XHTML authors with best practice for developing internationalized HTML supported by CSS to create pages for languages that use bidirectional text, such as Arabic and Hebrew.

2006-01-31

Arabic mathematical notation

Analyzes potential problems with the use of MathML for the presentation of mathematics in the notations customarily used with Arabic, and related languages.

2004-11-16

Requirements for the Internationalization of Web Services

Developed to help achieve worldwide usability for Web services, these requirements address the way internationalization options are exposed in Web services definitions, descriptions, messages, and discovery mechanisms.

2004-07-30

Web Services Internationalization Usage Scenarios

Describes internationalization usage patterns and scenarios for Web services. Provides additional guidance for implementers of Web service technologies, suggesting methods for dealing with general international interoperability issues in services and service descriptions. Provides a template for Web service designers to implement international capabilities in their services.

Drafts

Below are draft documents: Candidate Recommendations, other Working Drafts. Some of these may become Web Standards through the W3C Recommendation Track process. Others may be published as Group Notes or become obsolete specifications.

Candidate Recommendations

2004-11-22

Character Model for the World Wide Web 1.0: Resource Identifiers

Architectural Specification providing authors of specifications, software developers, and content developers with a common reference for the use of resource identifiers building on Unicode.

Other Working Drafts

2013-05-14

Requirements for Hangul Text Layout and Typography

This document describes requirements for general Korean language/Hangul text layout and typography realized with technologies like CSS, SVG and XSL-FO. The document is mainly based on a project to develop the international standard for Korean text layout. It is similar in intent to the Japanese Layout Requirements WG Note.

2013-04-11

Internationalization Tag Set (ITS) Version 2.0

This document defines data categories and their implementation as a set of elements and attributes called the Internationalization Tag Set (ITS) 2.0. ITS 2.0 is the successor of ITS 1.0; it is designed to foster the creation of multilingual Web content, focusing on HTML5, XML based formats in general, and to leverage localization workflows based on the XML Localization Interchange File Format (XLIFF). In addition to HTML5 and XML, algorithms to convert ITS attributes to RDFa and NIF are provided.

2013-03-07

Metadata for the Multilingual Web - Usage Scenarios and Implementations

An overview of usage scenarios and implementations demonstrating applications of the Internationalization Tag Set (ITS) 2.0. The usage scenarios are ranging from simple machine translation or human translation quality check to training for machine translation systems or automatic text analyis.

2013-02-12

CSS Fonts Module Level 3

This CSS3 module describes how font properties are specified and how font resources are loaded dynamically. The contents of this specification are a consolidation of content previously divided into CSS3 Fonts and CSS3 Web Fonts modules.

2012-11-13

CSS Text Module Level 3

This CSS3 module defines properties for text manipulation and specifies their processing model. It covers line breaking, justification and alignment, white space handling, text decoration and text transformation.

2012-07-10

Use Cases & Exploratory Approaches for Ruby Markup

This document looks at a number of use cases involving ruby, and examines the pros and cons of a number of alternative approaches for meeting those use cases using the current HTML5 model, the XHTML Ruby Annotation model, and two other models. The aim is to clarify which use cases are supported by the existing markup models (HTML5 or XHTML), and where they are not, provide suggestions about how the markup model could be adapted to support those use cases. Implementers and standards developers can then take this background information and the suggestions in this document to specify and implement a comprehensive markup model for ruby in HTML5.

2012-05-24

Requirements for Internationalization Tag Set (ITS) 2.0

This document gathers metadata proposed within the MultilingualWeb-LT Working Group for the Internationalization Tag Set Version 2.0 (ITS 2.0). The metadata targets web content (mainly HTML5) and deep Web content, for example 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.

2012-05-01

Character Model for the World Wide Web 1.0: Normalization

Architectural Specification providing authors of specifications, software developers, and content developers with a common reference for normalization and string identity matching to improve interoperable text handling on the World Wide Web.

2011-06-30

CSS3 Ruby Module

The set of CSS properties proposed in this document can be used in combination with the ruby elements of HTML to produce the stylistic effects needed to display ruby text appropriately relative to base text.

2011-05-24

CSS Lists and Counters Module Level 3

This CSS level 3 module describes how lists are styled.

2010-03-04

Additional Requirements for Bidi in HTML

This document contains proposals for new features to be added to HTML to support bidirectional text in languages such as Arabic, Hebrew, Persian, Thaana, Urdu, etc.

2006-06-12

Language Tags and Locale Identifiers for the World Wide Web

Describes mechanisms based on BCP 47 for identifying or selecting the language of content or locale preferences used to process information using Web technologies.

2004-05-09

Authoring Techniques for XHTML & HTML Internationalization: Characters and Encodings 1.0

Provides HTML/XHTML authors with best practice for developing internationalized HTML supported by CSS, focusing specifically on advice about character sets, encodings, and other character-specific matters.

2002-05-15

CSS3 module: line

Describes the positioning in the block progression direction both of elements and text within lines and of the lines themselves. This positioning is often relative to a baseline. It also describes special features for formatting of first lines and drop caps.

Obsolete Specifications

These specifications have either been superseded by others, or have been abandoned. They remain available for archival purposes, but are not intended to be used.

Retired

2012-05-22

Web Services Internationalization (WS-I18N)

Describes enhancements to SOAP messaging to provide internationalized and localized operations using locale and international preferences. These mechanisms can be used to accommodate a wide variety of development models for international usage.

2006-05-18

Internationalization and Localization Markup Requirements

When creating schemas (XML Schema, DTD, etc.), it is important to include constructs that meet the needs of content authors dealing with international audiences, and address the needs of the localization community. This document provides a list of key requirements to achieve such a goal.

2003-04-17

Framework Document for i18n Guidelines 1.0

This is a discussion document produced by the Guidelines, Education & Outreach Task Force (GEO) of the W3C Internationalization Working Group (I18N WG). It describes plans for producing documents that provide guidelines on internationalization of W3C technologies.

1998-03-13

Primary Language in HTML

Thoughts on how to mark the primary language(s) in a HTML document.

Resources Developed Outside W3C

The following resources are relevant to this area of work.

Internationalized Resource Identifiers (RFC 3987)

RFC 3987: Internationalization Resource Identifiers defines a new protocol element, the Internationalized Resource Identifier (IRI), as a complement to the Uniform Resource Identifier (URI).

Internet-Draft: BCP 47 (RFC 4646 and RFC 4647)

IETF Best Current Practice 47 describes language tags and language tag matching for cases where it is desirable to indicate the language used in an information object. Comprises two IETF RFCs: RFC 4646 Tags for Identifying Languages and RFC 4647 Matching of Language Tags. The two editors of this best practice participate in the Internationalization Working Group.

Date and Time Formats

Date and Time Formats is a W3C Member Submission that defines a profile of ISO 8601, the International Standard for the representation of dates and times, likely to satisfy most requirements.

translations