Input to BP4 http://www.w3.org/International/its/techniques/its-techniques.html#DevTrans

Hi all,

I had several comments for "Best Practice 4: Indicate the translatability of
elements and attributes". Rather than sending the comments, I have worked on
alternative wording for the prose (ie. all text except for the one in the
examples) of BP 4.

Overall rationale:

- The original text heavily focuses on ITS rules. From my understanding,
however, the general thing we first want to say is "document your code",
only afterwards we recommanded ITS rules as the most convenient and
important way of doing this.

- The fact that attributes should not be used to hold translatable content,
might become more prominent in the proposed alternative wording.

Cheers,
Christian
===

Best Practice 4: Indicate translatability 

Document which elements and attributes may contain translatable content.

Note: It is not recommanded to have translatable attributes (see BP 3).

How to do this

In order to ensure that your DTD or schema is in sync with its
documentation, you may want to consider a literate programming approach.
This approach, which is for example realized in ODD, helps to ensure that
code and accompanying prose do not get out of sync. Please check your
environment and schema language to see what is possible (in DTDs you may
want to use ordinaly XML comments, whereas in XSDs, you should use
"xsd:documentation").

It is recommended to document by means of the ITS data category
"translatability" rather than something like unrestricted prose. To be
specific, you should provide an ITS rules document where you use
"its:translateRule" elements to indicate which elements and attributes have
non-translatable content. ITS rules communicate effectively and in a formal
way the information that is needed. 

When creating the ITS rules for translatability you may keep in mind that
ITS defines the following defaults:

- elements: translatable
- attributes: not translatable

Thus, your ITS rules would only need to capture the cases where the defaults
do not apply (such as an "alt" attribute containing a text for an "img"
element.

Note: If some the content of an element is flagged with xml:lang="zxx",
where zxx indicates a content that is not in a language, the corresponding
element is a good candidate as being mentioned in an "its:translateRule".

Note: Please consider your overall environment to decided whether single
more complex XPath expressions such as

	 <its:translateRule selector="x|y|z/x/foo" translate="no"/>

	should be prefered over multiple, simpler XPath expressions such as 

	 <its:translateRule selector="x" translate="no"/>
	 <its:translateRule selector="y" translate="no"/>
	 <its:translateRule selector="z/x/foo" translate="no"/>

      Things to consider may for example be readability or processing
efficiency.

Christian Lieske
MultiLingual Technology Solutions (MLT)
SAP Language Services (SLS)
SAP Globalization Services
SAP AG
Dietmar-Hopp-Allee 16
D-69190 Walldorf
Germany
T   +49 (62 27) 7 - 6 13 03
F   +49 (62 27) 7 – 2 54 18
christian.lieske@sap.com <blocked::mailto:christian.lieske@sap.com> 
http://www.sap.com <blocked::http://www.sap.com/> 

Sitz der Gesellschaft/Registered Office: Walldorf, Germany

Vorstand/SAP Executive Board: Henning Kagermann (Sprecher/CEO), Léo
Apotheker (stellvertretender Sprecher/Deputy CEO), Werner Brandt, Claus
Heinrich, Gerhard Oswald, Peter Zencke

Vorsitzender des Aufsichtsrats/Chairperson of the SAP Supervisory Board:
Hasso Plattner 

Registergericht/Commercial Register Mannheim No HRB 350269

 

Diese E-Mail kann Betriebs- oder Geschäftsgeheimnisse oder sonstige
vertrauliche Informationen enthalten. Sollten Sie diese E-Mail irrtümlich
erhalten haben, ist Ihnen eine Kenntnisnahme des Inhalts, eine
Vervielfältigung oder Weitergabe der E-Mail ausdrücklich untersagt.

Bitte benachrichtigen Sie uns und vernichten Sie die empfangene E-Mail.
Vielen Dank.

 

This e-mail may contain trade secrets or privileged, undisclosed, or
otherwise confidential information. If you have received this e-mail in
error, you are hereby notified that any review, copying, or distribution of
it is strictly prohibited. Please inform us immediately and destroy the
original transmittal. Thank you for your cooperation.