Comments on "TML proposal"

Hi Brian, Jaap,

 

Please, let me to step forward with a comment on the "TML proposal" that has
been published in recent article in TAUS Review #3 on 'translation mark-up'
language:

http://issuu.com/tausreview/docs/tausreview-dataissue-april2015/14

 

The proposal suggests an annotation mark-up.

 

On "volunteer mandate" from my fellow members of W3C ITS interest group,
please let me to point out the following:

 

The TML seems to replicate ITS2.0 terminology and text analysis tag
functionality. ITS 2.0 is (just for the reference) as W3C standard which has
been developed recently by representative group of industry experts
(http://www.w3.org/TR/its20/).

 

Your TML idea seems to be a simplified approach of similar nature.

 

Well, ideas are hanging in the air, and Kudos to you for coming up with the
idea that has been good enough to develop the W3C standard, recognized by
well-deserved support of EU funding!

 

However, ITS2.0 is well developed, stable standard with lots of
implementations and case studies already, not to mention the group used that
has developed it.

 

AND, actually, looking at the proposal in more detail, my colleagues have
been quick to point out that "TML" as proposed has some real problems in
that it exposes metadata in ways that would totally break in non-aware
processes. Because it is relying on native HTML mechanisms that only work if
tools are of the "kludge" used to hide the data, it would end up blowing up
word counts for other tools, result in content being accidentally translated
(since <span> tags are not, by default protected), etc. We really do not
like the overloading of existing mechanisms in this way when they serve
fundamentally different purposes. It would take only one tool in the chain
that processed the content in an intelligent way that does not match the
expectation for things to break.

 

There is a real advantage to using ITS in these contexts because then tools
that don't understand it also know that they don't understand it. The
proposed TML in the article however, would be problematic because there is
nothing in it to tell the tools (a) that they don't know what to do with it
and (b) what they should do with it. It is thus entirely opaque in a bad
way.

 

ALSO, the "embedding comments" section looks like a replication for
"Localisation note". All three replications seem to be nearly exact copies
of ITS data categories. So for enabling ITS processors to understand the
proposed markup, one could create an ITS rules file. You write "adding
support will be a minimal effort", but that has the drawback that e.g. no
validation is possible - which is easy with validator.nu . Also, this only
covers HTML5 - what about Dita, docbook, mallard, TTML, XLIFF, ... (ITS
spans across all these.)

 

Finally, here's FAQ on the HTML "translate" attribute:

http://www.w3.org/International/questions/qa-translate-flag.en

 

Does TML have a translate marker? That would be an overlap with the HTML
native "translate" attribute. 

 

Besides this maybe useful: this section

http://www.w3.org/International/questions/qa-translate-flag.en#stickyness

using class attributes, like TML does, to provide such metadata, is
described as legacy approaches. See esp.: "replacing a class attribute value
with an attribute that is a formal part of the language makes this feature
much more reliable, especially in wider contexts."

 

Consequently, we would say that we would really recommend to use ITS in
these contexts. It is important that ITS effort is promoted, since it serves
to better purpose of interoperability and decrease of duplication of effort
in developing similar but incompatible solutions in different corners of the
industry.

 

Jaap, is there a way to make sure that this feedback is propagated to the
TAUS Review readership?

 

Perhaps we can arrange W3C ITS Interest Group to write a small
"counterpoint" article in the next issue of TAUS Review? Arle and Dave Lewis
could contribute with the language of the article.

 

Very Best Regards,

Serge Gladkoff