Question related to Recommendation/Best Practice/Relevant Discussions for "Translation-relevant content related to 'script' element in HTML"

Hi,

Since we discussed HTML's "script" element in https://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=21495#c1 I dare to send this to this list ...

Cheers,
Christian
==
The "script" element in HTML (any flavor) can contain translation-relevant content, and content that should not be changed by adaptations such as translation, or localization (see example below).

I wonder whether relevant recommendations or best practices related to this situation do already exist.

One way of looking at the situation is the following:

                The "script" element in HTML holds code.
                Any code should be internationalized.
                Internationalized code should externalize translation-relevant content (e.g. store the content in Java .properties files).

An alternative view, however, is this:

                Fragmentation of translation-relevant content - e.g. putting plain HTML into one file, and translation-relevant content of the HTML "script" element into another file - is bad. Contextual information might get lost for example.

Thus, presumably several recommendations or best practices exist. Examples that I could imagine:


1.       Externalize into Java .properties (but be aware of the fact that some languages may require Java-style encoding such as \u00e1).

2.       Externalize as JSON; choose a simple key-value JSON

3.       Do not externalize but use a special approach for allowing automated processing of translation-relevant content (e.g. use a variables with a special syntax to store translation-relevant content; example: var tr_a="Translate ME"; var tr_b="Translate ME TOO";  var b="www.zzz.com<http://www.zzz.com>";

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
<html>
<head>
<title>Sample</title>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
<SCRIPT LANGUAGE="JavaScript" TYPE="text/JavaScript">
function x(){
                                                                if (document.getElementById("y").innerHTML != "Please <em>wait</em> ...") {              \\ Case 1: Translation-relevant content with HTML markup
                                                                                alert("Checkbox selected but nothing selected from the drop down menu.");     \\ Case 2: Translation-relevant content without HTML markup
                                                                                alert("www.zzz.com<http://www.zzz.com>");                                                                                                                    \\ Case 3: Content that should not be changed by adaptations such as translation, or localization
                                                                }
}
</SCRIPT>
</head>
<body>
<p>Test</p>
</body>
</html>

Received on Thursday, 15 August 2013 12:38:46 UTC