The multilingual web

Benjamins Translation Library, 2008

Due to the critical role that normalization plays during the translation and localization processes, we propose here to analyze some standards, as well as the related software tools that are used by professional translators and by several automatic translating services. We will first point out the importance of normalization within the translation and localization activities. Next, we will introduce a methodology of standardization, whose objective is to harmonize the management and the representation of multilingual data. Without a doubt, the control of the interoperability between the industrial standards currently used for localization [XLIFF], translation memory [TMX], or with some recent initiatives such as the internationalization tag set [ITS], constitutes a major objective for a coherent and global management of multilingual data. The Multi Lingual Information Framework MLIF [ISO AWI 24616] is based on a methodology of standardization resulting from the ISO (sub-committees TC37/SC3 "Computer Applications for Terminology" and SC4 "Language Resources Management"). MLIF aims at proposing a high-level abstract specification platform for a computeroriented representation of multilingual data within a large variety of applications such as translation memories, localization, computeraided translation, multimedia, or electronic document management. MLIF should be considered as a unified conceptual representation of multilingual content and is not intended to substitute or to compete with any existing standard. MLIF is being designed with the objective of providing a common conceptual model and a platform allowing interoperability among several translation and localization standards, and by extension, their related tools. The major benefit of MLIF is interoperability because it allows experts to gather, under the same conceptual model, various tools and representations related to multilingual data. In addition, MLIF should also make it possible to evaluate and to compare these multilingual resources and tools.

2006

The extremely fast evolution of the technological development in the sector of Communication and Information Technologies, and in particular, in the field of natural language processing, makes particularly acute the question of standardization. The issues related to this ...

Software Maintenance, …, 2002

Current practice of Web site development does not address explicitly the problems related to multilingual sites. The same information, as well as the same navigation paths, page formatting and organization, are expected to be provided by the site independently from the chosen language. This is typically ensured by adopting personal conventions on the way pages are named and on their location in the file system. Updates are then performed manually and consistency depends on the ability of the programmers not to miss any impact of the change.

: "Multilingualism and the Web", in: Nicolás, Carlota / Moneglia, Massimo (eds.): La gestione unitaria dell'eredità culturale multilingue europea e la sua diffusione in rete. Atti della conferenza internazionale CLiP Abstract: Only a few years ago, the new technologies in general and the web in particular seemed to constitute a danger for most languages of the world. In the meantime, however, it would seem that quite the opposite is the case and that the new technologies favor multilingualism, the deconstruction of norms and of linguistic institutions, and the formation of hybrid languages. In fact, not only has the web itself become a multilingual environment but also minority languages and local dialects are migrating into this digital space. Furthermore, the (intentional) development of mixed languages even in environments dominated by writing would seem an indication of the weakening of the national and standard language paradigm, of the search for a we-code counterbalancing institutionalised they-codes and for a linguistic identity built on the multilingual knowledge of the speakers. In this contribution I arrive at the conclusion that the process from monolingualism to multilingualism and to hybridity as an important ingredient of digital culture a) presents linguistics with a unique possibility to study directly how the 'oral' is being transformed into the 'written', how norms evolve and spread, and from which tools depends the recognition of languages or dialects as modern communication systems, b) questions those schools of linguistics which have modelled language as a homogeneous entity, the ideal speaker-listener's competence as inherently monolingual, and have reduced linguistic variety to a common core, and c) constitutes a serious challenge for Humanities Computing and the developers of language technologies which, if taken up, will open up, finally, this new domain of research to the many Creoles and mixed languages spoken (and written) in the world.

Digital cultural heritage portals provide universal access to cultural objects and associated metadata originating in divers countries and language milieus. Offering an equally heterogeneous audience access to this content is a challenging endeavour. To ensure accessibility for audiences with different linguistic backgrounds, it is crucial that the underlying metadata offers the same information in several languages. This paper presents the conceptualisation and implementation of a metric for measuring the multilinguality in the digital cultural heritage portal Europeana. For every field in each record across the entire collection, the level of multilinguality can be assessed. Quantifying the multilingual richness of data has significant benefits for increasing meta-data quality, improving multilingual access to cultural collections and reaching multilingual audiences.

2010

Recently, the use of semantic technologies has gained quite some traction. With increased use of these technologies, their maturation not only in terms of performance, robustness but also with regard to support of non-latin-based languages and regional differences is of paramount importance. In this paper, we provide a comprehensive review of the current state of the internationalization (I18n) of Semantic Web technologies.

2004

There is a growing interest in international collaboration, and therefore a need for internationalized software that can be localized to various languages. Traditionally, systems to develop internationalized software use a specific database to store translations, and either manual or automatic translations of data. This paper describes GIW, a generic system that can be used to create internationalized websites. GIW is able to use any kind of database management system and is also able to handle both manual and automatic translations. These changes can be made without any modification to the architecture of the GIW system.

For a localiser, the shift from static to CMS-based dynamic websites usually involves assimilating a new editing environment, acquiring administrative rights for the site, and relinquishing the various benefits of using CAT tools. However, the possibility of integrating CAT tools in the localisation process is now becoming a reality by means of localisation standards (mainly ITS and XLIFF). In this paper, we introduce an experimental Java application we have developed for the import/export of multilingual web content for the Joomla! CMS (with the FaLang extension). We go through the workflow and explain the lessons learnt from our experiments with this and other related tools. As our research is translator-oriented, we discuss some current limitations for localisers’ work in the theoretical and practical approaches taken for the multilingual management and translation of CMS-based websites and suggest some alternatives for the future.

7 February 2006 This document was created for cultural institutions to emphasize the importance of multilingualism, and to provide them information and tools for establishing multilingual access to their collections. In the Introduction we summarize the whole survey process carried out by the WP3 working group in the scope of the MINERVA Plus Project. The aim of the survey was mapping the multilingualism of the cultural sites and collecting information on multilingual thesauri in use. The survey lasted for a year from June 2004 to June 2005 in two runs, the results are presented in the following chapters. During the survey process we realized that we need to learn about official and minority languages and legislation within different countries and so we started to collect Country reports. This information should be the starting point in each European Union project because it helps to understand the differences between countries. Each report has the same structure: multilingual diversity of the country, an evaluation of the participation in the survey and use of multilingual thesauri or controlled vocabularies. We present the results of the Survey of multilingual websites and thesauri in the following chapter The survey in the different countries and the statistics. We have statistical information about the types of institutions, which registered their websites, how many of them monolingual, and multilingual, how many of them are available in English. And finally how many of them uses controlled vocabularies for information retrieval. We introduce also the thesauri used in different countries. One of the practical aims of the MINERVA Project is to share the Best practice examples. Country representatives were asked to nominate the best practice examples for multilingual websites and thesauri. We have summarized the results of the nominations for Best practice examples for multilingual thesauri and introduced some of them in detail, which are already in use in many different countries. In the survey we collected 657 multilingual websites from all over Europe. We present the Best practice examples of multilingual cultural websites, which are available in two or more languages, and meet the requirements of the 7th chapter of the Quality Principles for cultural Web Sites: a handbook published by the MINERVA Plus WP5 working group. Some of them implements thesaurus for information retrieval. From the results, and findings we set up the Conclusions about the importance of multilingualism, and the use of multilingual thesauri. We also made same proposal for the future in the Future perspectives about supporting the translation of the well-tested thesauri, the quality test beds for thesauri, and the further collection of multilingual thesauri.

2005