90+ languages are each spoken by 10+ million people
The Web community has made tremendous progress in internationalizing
the web over nearly 30 years
But progress is slow
Developer support
Audiences
For internationalization to work there must be a collaboration of
language experts, web site designers and developers, and vendors who are
active in the web (e.g. creating browsers)
Primary — and overlapping — beneficiaries for parts
of this effort
Language enablement for additional languages appeals most directly
to "language stakeholders" (e.g. governments, culture groups, etc.)
who utilize the language
Developer support appeals most directly to tech companies that are
building the infrastructure for internationalization and W3C standards
groups
Author support appeals to people creating web content in their own
language as well as to companies who build a large
number of website in many languages for business reasons, or due to
regulations that require multilingual support
Goals
W3C intends to marshal the resources of organizations that care about
these problems to strengthen internationalization support on the web
Set 3-10 year stretch goals of progress
Measurable progress on language support, author support, developer
support
Goals set independently so that we can move faster in areas where we
get greater support
Critical success factors
Active participation of W3C membership
Involvement of new participants -particularly in language specific
areas - who can bring language specific knowledge
Increased effort on the part of W3C staff
Will require additional, unique funding on behalf of stakeholders
Language enablement
How well the Web currently supports a particular language:
Broken
Minimal
Basic
Advanced
Language enablement
How well the Web currently supports a particular language:
Broken
Some fundamental requirement of the language/script prevents
basic use on the Web (except, perhaps, through the use of pre-rendered
images)
Minimal
Basic
Advanced
Language enablement
How well the Web currently supports a particular language:
Broken
Minimal
The language is readable on the Web but features considered basic
by the local community are missing.
Basic
Advanced
Language enablement
How well the Web currently supports a particular language:
Broken
Minimal
Basic
The Web supports features commonly required on a regular basis;
these typically include things such as emphasis using
font styles or text decoration or special marks, bidi support,
abbreviations, justification, etc.
Advanced
Language enablement
How well the Web currently supports a particular language:
Broken
Minimal
Basic
Advanced
The Web supports rendering beyond the basic expectations,
ie. at the level of usage in high-quality books (excluding
"art books") or magazines in the culture; it may include
things such as vertical text, script-specific pagination
features, letter spacing, etc.
Language enablement
How well the Web currently supports a particular language:
Broken | Minimal | Basic | Advanced
The decision as to whether a particular feature is deemed a
basic need or advanced support will sometimes depend on the
opinion of the users of a particular writing system. What is
deemed basic in some writing systems may be deemed advanced for
others. Some features (such as emphasis) may be realised by both
basic and advanced features.
Language enablement status
Ethnographers report that there are nearly 7000
languages. We have a lot of work to do.
However, not every language has completely distinct features that need
support.
Today we estimate that only a couple of dozen are supported at the Advanced level;
many more are only
at the Basic level.
Language enablement objectives
We would like to move 5 languages every year from Basic to Advanced
and 20 from Minimal to Basic — enormous effort!
Within 3 years, all of the top 100 languages are at least at Basic
Every year we make progress of moving some additional languages to
Minimal
These objectives can be achieved with a 6-fold increase in staff
plus much increased participation from our community
Approach to Language Enablement
Basic steps required for any language/script family
Recruit network of experts
Gap analysis
Documentation of requirements
Communication of requirements to spec developers
Collaboration with all stakeholders to fulfill needs
Approach to Language Enablement: roles
W3C staff:
Orchestrate entire activity
Provide general experience and background to the process
Accelerate communications between stakeholders
Provide technical solutions
Language experts:
Identify gaps and prioritize them
Provide requirements
Assess whether solutions are adequate
Approach to Language Enablement: resources
Varies: similarity of issues to existing
known issues in other languages
Rough numbers for a single language of "average" complexity:
A core deliverable for W3C, for years, has been to support developers
Creators of specifications
Creators of system level tools (e.g. browsers, printers)
Creators of user-level tools (e.g. wysiwyg editors)
The basic work involved is expected to be funded by W3C Membership
funds
Enhanced support is now required due to:
Increase in the number of specifications to be reviewed
Increased complexity and diversity in specs
Complex standardization needs of particular vertical industries:
Government data, Digital publishing, Entertainment
The need to provide developers with
better guidelines for
implementing, and better tools for reviewing and evaluating
international support in their technologies.
With a global economy there is a greater urgency in internationalizing
content
Successful authoring is limited by the number of languages that are supported at the Advanced level
Much of this is simply a question of investment: paying staff to
translate the content
However, the degree of success and the quality of the localization can
also be helped with tools
These tools will become more important as more languages get to the
Advanced level; there will be more published with sophisticated
styling. Localization will get more challenging
Author support: Goals
With better tools we would like to reduce the cost of localization
into different languages
With better tools we would like to increase the quality of
localizations
As a stretch goal, we would like to see the number of languages for
these top 150 websites to grow by 10 languages over the next 5 years
(recognizing that this is not entirely in our hands.)
Increase the usage of language tagging on the Web, and increase
further the move to UTF-8 for web sites
Increase the use of local features such as ruby, vertical text,
counter-styles, local forms of emphasis, etc.
Reduce the complexity of markup on bidi pages
Participation
W3C has provided tools for many years. However, we need a higher
bandwidth discussions with leading website developers. This
can inform what today's major barriers are so we can conceive of new
tools and enablement
This level of tooling requires funding for 1 FTE.
Additionally, as we learn new requirements for different types of
enablement there might be new funding needed for new needs.
Putting all of the pieces together
W3C would like to make simultaneous progress on improving
internationalization
Requires participation and funding from three communities: language,
author, and developer
A purpose of this presentation is to seek sufficient funding over the
next 3 months so that we can announce a major new initiative to
internationalize the web. We would like to get as many
organizations behind this as possible (a) to give momentum and
enthusiasm to the project and (b) to encourage participation
Sponsorship levels
Platinum ($100k)
Gold ($50k)
Silver ($25k)
Bronze ($10k)
Sponsorship levels: Platinum
Platinum sponsorship is a commitment of $100 K per year.
This provides donors with:
A seat on the Internationalization Review Board
An ability to earmark half of the funding to particular projects
An ability to label their website as Platinum sponsors of W3C
Internationalization
Sponsorship levels: Gold
Gold sponsorship is a commitment of $50 K per year. This provides
donors with:
A seat on the Internationalization Review Board
An ability to earmark half of the funding to particular projects
An ability to label their website as Gold sponsors of W3C
Internationalization
Sponsorship levels: Silver
Silver sponsorship is a commitment of $25K per year. This
provides donors with:
An ability to earmark half of the funding to particular projects
An ability label their website as Silver sponsors of W3C
Internationalization
Sponsorship levels: Bronze
Bronze sponsorship is a commitment of $10K per year. This
provides donors with:
An ability to label their website as sponsors of W3C
internationalization.
Internationalization Review Board
Chaired by Architecture and Technology Lead
Other participants from W3C Team (CEO, Internationalization
specialist)
Meets twice a year
Reviews plans, progress
Advises on new directions
Liases with broader Internationalization community
Sponsorship types
In addition to Internationalization sponsors, sponsors have the
ability to claim a more targeted designation.
Language Internationalization sponsors provide money as well as expert
staff - committed to work on moving certain languages up a level
(Minimal to Basic, Basic to Advanced).
They get the additional advantage that W3C will commit to work on
facilitating the advancement of their language
Author Internationalization sponsors provide money as well as expert
staff - committed to making it easier for authors to localize websites.
They get the additional advantage that W3C will commit to work
with them and address their requests to make it easier to localize
content.
