Translations and localization problem

Hi folks, hi Judy

in the "Why Standards Harmonization is Essential to Web Accessibility" document, I have read what follows as a problem for the W3C and WAI global knowledge:

"the lack of an authorized translation of a guideline in a local language -- yet for WCAG 2.0, W3C/WAI expects authorized translations to be possible".

It would seem, according to this phrase, that W3C is searching for "authorized" translators; but it's exactly the opposite: W3C does't allow not-english versions of its documents to become officially recognized as W3C documents.

That's the real problem.

And if we all think about it, we'll finally discover that W3C and WAI documents find growing difficulties: If a state or a nation cannot base its politics on an official W3C document in its own language, it's normal that many different standards will be born all over the not-english language countries.

In Italy we're having great problems in making a law which should base itself on an American document; we all know that W3C is made of worldwide people (there are many italias too), but can we really pretend that Italian government may found an italian law on an english language only document?

Actually, the only normative version of W3C documents is in english (it's clearly written in all W3C raccomandations); that's why we cannot say in an official WAI resource that one of the potential problem is "the lack of an authorized translation of a guideline in a local language". We will have the possibility to say it only when W3C will officially recognize its documents' localization (this work may be done by local W3C officies).

In my opinion, W3C should immediatly find a good solution to this problem; it's a credibility matter, and the whole Web will make a great step ahead with a W3C more and more "strong" and credible.

My best regards, 

Roberto Castaldo
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www.webaccessibile.org coordinator
IWA/HWG Member
r.castaldo@iol.it
rcastaldo@webaccessibile.org
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Received on Thursday, 4 March 2004 06:42:48 UTC