Re: Translation control in HTML5

(With my editor hat off, and my Google hat on:)

On Thu, 31 Jul 2008, Chris Wilson wrote:
> 
> Problem: The translation services translate all elements, including the 
> ones that need to be left untranslated. The document author has no 
> option to control the behavior of the translation service.
> 
> We believe that the web needs control over translatability at an element 
> level as well.  Therefore we suggest enable author to mark 
> untranslatable elements as such. Automated translation services can then 
> respect the tagging, either deciding not to translate the entire page 
> (e.g. if this were set on <body>) or on individual elements.

This is something that would be very useful for Google, too.


> In HTML 5, this could be done with a new attribute "translate", valid on 
> all elements. Values "yes" and "no". Default is "yes".  By default 
> attributes are not translatable, alt and title remaining as exceptions. 
> HTML will not introduce new translatable attributes.

How about a new keyword for "lang", instead, which means "not 
translatable" or some such? lang="computer-code" or something.

-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'

Received on Thursday, 31 July 2008 20:25:55 UTC