Position Paper for eBooks & i18n W3C Workshop on 2013-06-04, Tokyo, Japan

Hisashi Morita, Editor, Ohmsha Ltd.
(hmorita@ohmsha.co.jp)

Perspective:

I am interested in i18n of ebooks as a professional book editor who has
been involved in translation titles.

I have been working as a book editor for over 15 years. My employer is a
Japanese publisher based in Tokyo, specializing in electrics,
electronics, and IT books. About one half of the titles I have been
involved were Japanese translation, mostly from English. Some of our
original titles are translated to other languages.

Viewpoint:

I18n of ebooks is important for knowledge exchange and communication
between people from different language areas, since i18n is a basis for
l10n (and m17n). And an ebook, especially EPUB, can be used as a source
for such l10n.

But it is not guaranteed that every title comes with such i18n.

Suggestions:

Discussions on i18n baseline with consideration for l10n and m17n may be
beneficial.