Re: Internationalized text
Re: Internationalized text
- Subject: Re: Internationalized text
- From: Eric Friedman <email@hidden>
- Date: Mon, 29 Sep 2003 08:42:16 -0700
Darrin,
Translation software is a fascinating and extremely complex area. I
worked for a couple of years for a company that was building tools in
this space and I can tell you that it's no small undertaking.
I would suggest that you take a look at some of the existing products
(most of which are windows-oriented) to get some ideas for what works.
Translators are demanding users -- they are typically paid by the word,
so time really is money for them, which means that the software
ergonomics have to be just right. The leading company in this area is
Trados -- almost everyone uses their stuff.
As far as cross-platform data storage/representation issues, there are
a couple of standards groups working on this problem under the aegis of
LISA (Localiation Industry Standards Association). One of those
projects is called XLIFF -- XML Localization Interchange File Format.
You should look at that. You should also look at TMX, which is used to
represent translation memories -- a must have for any translation
software.
If you've done any research on the translation industry, you'll know
that it's basically made up of agencies that farm jobs out to
freelancers in multistage "translate, edit, proof" workflows. Because
you can't guarantee that two freelancers are using the same software
(unless it's Trados, which is what just about everyone uses),
interoperability is critical.
There's a lot more to say on this subject, but it's not really
cocoa-dev related, so I'll end here. Last thing: this is not a market
with a lot of $$ opportunities for newcomers. Trados is the dominant
player by far, and there are significant technical obstacles to
building a tool. Finally, the budgetary constraints and technical
reticence of the user base are barriers to innovations that would
require radically different skills. Translation is a high-touch
process and it's likely to remain one for the forseeable future.
Eric
On Monday, September 29, 2003, at 07:47 AM, Darrin Cardani wrote:
I am writing an application that will be used to produce text in
multiple languages. It's a translation tool of sorts, so documents
will likely have text in many different languages within them. Some of
the text the user enters may end up in menus in the interface, too.
For example, they may view their document in it's original English
text. Then they can choose another language that they've translated it
into, and view it in that language.
So I'm left with a couple of questions.
1) What is the best (cross-platform) way to store the data on disk?
What information do I need to make sure that when the document is
opened on another computer, it is still legible?
2) What is the best way to put multi-lingual data into interface
elements? For example, if the user has English and Greek versions of
their document, I would want my popup menu to have the word "English"
(in Roman letters), and the word "Ellinika" in Greek letters in the
menu, probably. Can that be done? I was planning on allowing the user
to enter the name of the languages they will be translating to and
from, so the popup menu could theoretically have words in dozens of
languages and scripts in it.
3) What internal data types (again, cross-platform preferred) should
be used for keeping around the data the user enters?
I'm a little new to doing this sort of thing. I've dealt with
multi-byte text in the Classic toolbox a little bit, using functions
like CharacterByteType (), etc., but it seems like things have
progressed quite a bit since those days. Any help would be > appreciated.
Thanks,
Darrin
--
Darrin Cardani - email@hidden
President, Buena Software, Inc.
<http://www.buena.com/>
Video, Image and Audio Processing Development
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