Re: Another idea for a FAQ

Richard Ishida wrote:

>How does 'semantic' markup (ie. markup without presentational bias) improve localization costs?
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At least, for  translation from LTR to RTL languages. Sometimes  it's 
also necessary to re-adapt the CSS files linked to the original HTML 
page. All text properties (text-align, margin, float ...) that has 
"right" or "left" in their set of values, put supplementary 'troubles' 
on the hand of the translator. If such properties are drowned in the 
middle of others or if many styles are there just for décoration, and 
not for layout,  it is not always easy to find the RTL counterpart of 
the layout of the LTR page.
Of course, the trick (brut force)  is to change any "right" to "left" 
and vice-versa, but is it always correct? And  it doesn't  it always  
work (e.g. margin: a, b, c, d sould be changed to margin: a, d, c, b).
As an exercise, I  have to find the right layout for the arabic version 
of  http://www.w3.org/International/about, that I've just began to 
translate to put on the Office site (I had an older version).

Najib

>See http://sidesh0w.com/weblog/2004/10/30/go_go_gadget_ethnocentricity/ for some discussion on this already.
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>RI
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>============
>Richard Ishida
>W3C
>
>contact info:
>http://www.w3.org/People/Ishida/ 
>
>W3C Internationalization:
>http://www.w3.org/International/ 
>
>Publication blog:
>http://people.w3.org/rishida/blog/
> 
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-- 
Najib TOUNSI (mailto:tounsi@w3.org)
Bureau W3C au Maroc (http://www.w3c.org.ma/)
Ecole Mohammadia d'Ingenieurs, BP 765 Agdal-RABAT Maroc (Morocco)
Phone : +212 (0) 37 68 71 74  Fax : +212 (0) 37 77 88 53
Mobile: +212 (0) 61 22 00 30

Received on Friday, 26 November 2004 19:11:36 UTC