Re: standard practice for links in translated documents

François Yergeau wrote:
> Ivan Herman a écrit :
> 
>> We would prefer to link to the original document. W3C does not hold 
>> the translation on its web site, and we may not be sure that those 
>> translation remain available and accessible all the time.
> 
> 
> Which is one more reason why W3C should in fact host translations.


Which is a complicated problem. The real issue, in my view, is the fact that we have no 
means of really checking whether the translations are really perfect or at least 
technically and linguistically acceptable. We trust the community, therefore we do link to 
the translations without checking; but by moving the translations to our site we would 
give and extra 'stamp' that the outside world (who may not realize how difficult it is to 
do translations...) would consider as absolutely official version in, say, Vietnamese or 
Hungarian... and that may even lead to legal problems.

We are actually working on a policy with these in mind (ie, to have some 'official' 
translations that regulators and such could refer to, for example), so watch this space.

Ivan


> 

-- 

Ivan Herman
W3C Communications Team, Head of Offices
C/o W3C Benelux Office at CWI, Kruislaan 413
1098SJ Amsterdam, The Netherlands
tel: +31-20-5924163; mobile: +31-641044153;
URL: http://www.w3.org/People/Ivan/