4-5 April 2011, Pisa, Italy. Hosted jointly by the Istituto di Informatica e Telematica and Istituto di Linguistica Computazionale, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche.

The MultilingualWeb project is looking at best practices and standards related to all aspects of creating, localizing and deploying the Web multilingually. The project aims to raise the visibility of existing best practices and standards and identify gaps. The core vehicle for this is a series of four events which are planned for the coming two years.

After the highly successful workshop in Madrid last year, this workshop will continue to survey currently available best practices and standards aimed at helping content creators, localizers, tools developers, and others meet the challenges of the multilingual Web.

Participation is free. We welcome participation from both speakers and non-speaking attendees. For more information, see the Call for Participation

Bidi- Pierdere de spatii (Bidi space loss)

HTML, XHTML, XML si Codurile de Control (HTML, XHTML, XML and Control Codes)

Cand sa folosim negocierea limbajului (When to use language negotiation)

These articles were translated into Romanian thanks to Costea Marian.

A report summarising the MultilingualWeb workshop in Madrid is now available from the MultilingualWeb site. Alongside the summaries are links to slides, video recordings, and the IRC log for each speaker and the discussion sessions.

Entitled “The Multilingual Web: Where are We?”, the workshop surveyed and shared information about currently available best practices and standards that can help content creators and localizers address the needs of the multilingual Web, including the Semantic Web. Attendees also heard about gaps that need to be addressed, and enjoyed opportunities to network and share information between the various different communities involved in enabling the multilingual Web. Just over a hundred people attended.

The site also has pointers to blog posts, tweets and photos as well as other information related to the workshop.

Building on the success of the Madrid workshop, preparations have now begun for the next workshop, to be held in Pisa, Italy, in March 2011. A Call for Participation will be issued soon.

RFC 6067 specifies an extension to BCP 47. BCP 47 provides subtags that specify language and/or locale-based behavior.

Many locale identifiers require additional “tailorings” or options for specific values within a language, culture, region, or other variation. This extension provides a mechanism for using these additional tailorings within language tags for general interchange.

The maintaining authority for the extension defined by this document is the Unicode Consortium. The Unicode Consortium defines a standardized, structured set of locale data and identifiers for locale data in the “Common Locale Data Repository” or “CLDR”.

Web sites internacionais & multilíngues (International & multilingual web sites)

This article was translated into Brazilian Portuguese thanks to Matheus Salmi, CZ SEE.

Zweibuchstabige oder dreibuchstabige Sprachcodes (Two-letter or three-letter language codes)

This article was translated into German thanks to Gunnar Bittersmann.

Setarea parametrului HTTP set de caractere (Setting the HTTP charset parameter)

Verificarea Antetelor HTTP (Checking HTTP Headers)

Setul de caractere in document (Document character set)

Verficarea codificarii caracterului cu ajutorul validatorului (Checking the character encoding using the validator)

These articles were translated into Romanian thanks to Echipa Traduceri W3.

Slides, video recordings of speakers and IRC notes for the MultilingualWeb workshop in Madrid are now available from the MultilingualWeb site. There are also pointers to blog posts, tweets and photos related to the workshop.

Entitled “The Multilingual Web: Where are We?”, the workshop surveyed and shared information about currently available best practices and standards that can help content creators and localizers address the needs of the multilingual Web, including the Semantic Web. Attendees also heard about gaps that need to be addressed, and enjoyed opportunities to network and share information between the various different communities involved in enabling the multilingual Web. Just over a hundred people attended.

Work is under way on a summary report for the workshop, which will be announced in due course.

Building on the success of the Madrid workshop, preparations have now begun for the next workshop, to be held in Pisa, Italy, in March 2011. A Call for Participation will be issued soon.

Localização vs. Internacionalização (Localization vs. Internationalization)

This article was translated into Brazilian Portuguese thanks to Matheus Salmi, CZ SEE.

On 20th October Richard Ishida and Aharon Lanin gave a talk entitled

Extending Bidi Support on the Web

at the Internationalization & Unicode Conference in Santa Clara, California, USA.

The talk describes proposals that have recently been put to the HTML and CSS Working Groups to improve handling of bidirectional text on the Web (for languages such as Arabic, Farsi, Hebrew, Urdu, etc). The talk gives a high-level overview, using examples, of most of the recommendations in the document Additional Requirements for Bidi in HTML. It also provides links in the notes to more detailed information and to HTML5 bug reports for those who want to know more and follow the discussions.