Tag(s): mlw

A report summarizing the MultilingualWeb workshop in Rome is now available from the MultilingualWeb site. It contains a summary of each session with links to presentation slides and more detailed scribing done on site in Rome. Links to video for each session will be posted soon.

With approximately 150 attendees, the Rome Workshop focused on the theme “Making the Multilingual Web Work” and emphasized information about the best practices and standards that help content creators and localizers ensure that the World-Wide Web lives up to its name, across boundaries of language and culture. Attendees heard from a variety of perspectives, with fruitful dialogue between various stakeholder groups involved in trying to expand the multilingual scope of the Web.

Taking place over two days (12 and 13 March, 2013) at the headquarters of the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the Workshop featured twenty-four conference-style presentations, seven poster presentations, and an “open space” discussion that featured six breakout sessions focusing on key topics that emerged during the Workshop. In addition, it showcased technology implementations of the forthcoming internationalization Tag Set (ITS) 2.0 standard.

The Workshop was sponsored by the EU-funded QTLaunchPad project and Verisign. It was run by the MultilingualWeb-LT Working Group.

The program has been published for the upcoming W3C MultilingualWeb Workshop: Making the Multilingual Web Work in Rome, 12–13 March 2013.

Mark Davis and Vladimir Weinstein of Google will deliver the keynote presentation, “Innovations in Internationalization at Google”. This will be followed by one and a half days of talks on various aspects of what it takes to make multilingualism work on the Web, plus an afternoon of discussion-oriented breakout sessions that focus on best practices for various aspects the multilingual Web. Speakers will come from organizations like Adobe Systems, SAP, Yandex, the Spanish Tax Agency, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, Microsoft, Lionbridge, SDL, the European Commission, and leading universities and research institutions from around the world.

The program will also feature a showcase of implementations of the forthcoming ITS 2.0 specification that will allow attendees to get a sneak peak at how this specification will impact and support multilingual requirements on the Web.

See the Call for Participation for details about how to register for the workshop. Participation in the workshop is free.

Important: The deadline for registration is 8 March, but available attendance slots are filling up fast and are expected to run out before the deadline. So please be sure to register soon to ensure that you can attend.

The MultilingualWeb workshops, funded by the European Commission and coordinated by the W3C, looks at best practices and standards related to all aspects of creating, localizing and deploying the multilingual Web. The workshops are successful because they attracted a wide range of participants, from fields such as localization, language technology, browser development, content authoring and tool development, etc., to create a holistic view of the interoperability needs of the multilingual Web.

We look forward to seeing you in Rome!

Linked Open Data has emerged as a critical issue for organizations seeking to make their data more valuable and accessible. However, working with multilingual linked open data (MLOD) poses special challenges that require careful consideration. A special breakout session at the W3C Multilingual Web Workshop in Rome (March 12–13, 2013), facilitated by eight leading MLOD practitioners, will focus on gathering a common set of requirements for implementing best practices in MLOD.

The session aims to crowd-source ideas from the community regarding best practices for MLOD. A number of short lightning presentations will be given, followed by an open discussion with a shared common output. A high level overview of this output will be presented back to the MLW community during the conference with a reference white paper to be published later based on the output of the breakout session. Participants are encouraged to bring their ideas and solutions for discussion.

Participation in this breakout session and the Multilingual Web Workshop is free of charge. See http://multilingualweb.eu/documents/rome-workshop/rome-lod for more details.

The deadline for speaker submissions for the 6th MultilingualWeb Workshop (March 12–13, 2013 in Rome, Italy) is this Friday (January 18 at 23:59 UTC).

With a keynote by Mark Davis and Vladimir Weinstein (Google), special breakout sessions on linked open data and other critical topics, this Workshop is set to continue the tradition of excellence set by the previous six Workshops, and will provide an outstanding forum for thought leaders to share their ideas and gain critical feedback.

While the organizers have already received many excellent submissions, there is still time to make a proposal, and we encourage interested parties to do so by the deadline. With over 100 attendee registrations already submitted for the Workshop, we are certain to have a large and diverse audience and stimulating discussion about all of the presentations.

For more information, please visit the Rome Workshop Call for Participation.

Mark Davis (President and Cofounder, Unicode Consortium, and Software Engineer, Unicode and ICU, Google) and Vladimir Weinstein (Engineering Manager, Google) will deliver the keynote talk at the upcoming 6th MultilingualWeb Workshop in Rome, Italy (March 12–13).

The keynote will discuss how Google supports its ambitious goals of removing barriers to information, in an ever increasing number of languages, through recent innovations in internationalization technology.

The MultilingualWeb workshop series examines best practices and standards related to all aspects of creating, localizing and deploying the Web multilingually. It aims to raise the visibility of existing best practices and standards and identify gaps, with a view to 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 and to register, see the Call for Participation.

Led by experts in the field, two special break-out sessions on Internationalized Domain Names (IDN) and Linked Open Data (LOD) are planned for the upcoming MultilingualWeb workshop, to be held at the headquarters of the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization in the heart of Rome, on 12-13 March. We will also continue the Open Space discussions that have been so popular in the past.

In addition, lunch-time exhibition sessions will showcase the recent work and progress made on implementing the ITS 2.0 specification, a major effort in the W3C to improve support for language- and translation-related processes.

Register soon to ensure you get a place, especially if you are interested in also speaking. See the Call for Participation.

The W3C’s MultilingualWeb workshops bring together approximately 150 implementers, leading developers, localizers, researchers and users of the Web to discuss best practices and standards related to all aspects of creating, localizing and deploying the Web multilingually. One and a half days of presentations will be followed by break-out sessions that will allow attendees to explore additional topics in an in-depth, discussion-oriented fashion.

Participation is free.

If you have any questions, contact the program committee chair, Dr. Arle Lommel (arle.lommel@dfki.de).

12–13 March 2013 in Rome, Italy, hosted by the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations.

The W3C announces today the sixth in a series of workshops exploring the mechanisms and processes needed to ensure that the World Wide Web lives up to its potential around the world and across barriers of language and culture.

Anyone may attend at no charge and the W3C welcomes participation by both speakers and non-speaking attendees. Early registration is encouraged due to limited space.

Building on the success of five highly regarded previous workshops in Madrid, Pisa, Limerick, Luxembourg, and Dublin, this workshop will emphasize the application of theory and technology to meet practical needs. The workshop brings together participants interested in the best practices and standards needed to help content creators, localizers, language tools developers, and others meet the challenges of the multilingual Web. It provides further opportunities for networking across communities that span the various aspects involved. We are particularly interested in speakers who can demonstrate novel solutions for reaching out to a global, multilingual audience. Registration now online.

The deadline for submissions to speak at the FEISGILLT event has been extended to 14 August.

In various tracks, this event brings the communities involved in ITS 2.0 and XLIFF 2.0 closer together. Experts from the language services industry, from language technology, and from the Web community at large will discuss the role of these upcoming standards and help to shape their interplay. The ITS 2.0 track is supported by the W3C MultilingualWeb-LT Working Group and by the MultilingualWeb community at large.

If you want to speak at the event, submit a proposal as soon as possible.

This event will be held in Seattle, USA, as part of the Localization World Conference. In order to participate, you must register. Participants in W3C working groups will receive a 20% discount for attending the FEISGILLT event. For more information, see the FEISGILLT Call for Participation.

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

Entitled “The Multilingual Web – Linked Open Data and MultilingualWeb-LT Requirements”, the workshop focused on two specific topics: the intersection between Linked Open Data and Multilingual Technologies, and requirements of the W3C MultilingualWeb-LT Working Group.

In both areas, the workshop was a great success. First, it helped to connect leading experts in the areas of linked open data, language technologies, terminology and localization. And second, detailed discussion about MultilingualWeb-LT requirements provided a major input to the creation of the first public working draft of Internationalization Tag Set (ITS) 2.0.

This workshop was unlike previous workshops because its focus was specific to two topics, and the audience was intentionally restricted to experts in those areas. The MultilingualWeb-LT project plans to hold additional workshops next year that will have the broad scope and similar format to previous workshops.

The program page of the 5th MultilingualWeb Workshop in Dublin on Multilingual Linked Open Data and the MultilingualWeb-LT Requirements has now been updated with links to speakers’ slides, IRC logs, and video recordings (hosted by Videolectures). It also includes links to social media information (such as tweets) about the workshop. If you have any blog posts, photos, etc. online that you would like to add to the page, please let Arle Lommel (arle.lommel@dfki.de) know so that we can link to them from this page.

The workshop was a great success. While intentionally smaller than previous Multilingual Web workshops, it brought together many of the world’s leading experts in the emerging field of linked open data and multilingual linked open data. Thanks to the efforts of the excellent speakers and the local organizers at Trinity College Dublin, the program was of great benefit to attendees.

A summary report of the workshop will follow soon.