Re: WCAG 1.0 official translation to Catalan LTO submission of intent

Dear Mireia,

first of all, I must apologize to be so late with the answer. It was an
unlucky coincidence of lots of travels of all concerned with an extra
load created by a closing review for an European Union project... Again,
sorry about that delay.

We were all impressed by the thoroughness and thoughtfulness of your
submission. We have also checked and we are perfectly satisfied by the
list of participants, which fulfil our requirements. We have only very
minor comments, which are as follows:

- according to 1.1.2 of the Translation Policy [1] we would need some
written and publicly visible trace that all participants of your project
are indeed ready to contribute. A simple email from them to me will
perfectly do, I will then archive those on our publicly visible email
archive for further reference. (It is not necessary to copy those mails
to the translators' mailing list.)

- I know that we have a direct reference to the WAI Glossary, and thank
you for having included this in the submission. The problem (and this
clearly our problem!) is that this Glossary is not yet final. As a
consequence, we can waive for now the requirement of translating the
whole Glossary first. Of course I presume a Catalan version of the
Glossary, or at least of the terms used in the WCAG, will be created as
a by-product of the work and it would be nice to have that be made
available in some public form. However, you can start with the WCAG
translation right away.

That is it. I wish you good luck with your project and we are excited to
see the result!

Sincerely,

Ivan Herman


[1] http://www.w3.org/2005/02/TranslationPolicy.html

Mireia Ribera wrote:
> 
> For a number of years the Librarianship and Documentation Faculty at the
> University of Barcelona [i] has been involved in promoting web
> accessibility, both through its standard course offering and through
> research and dissemination activities.  An early example of this
> involvement was the 2001 Catalan translation of the Web Content
> Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), version 1.0, that was prepared by three
> Faculty members (http://www.ub.es/biblio/bid/06w3c.htm).  This document
> has been widely disseminated among the Catalan speaking community on the
> Internet.
> 
> Recently the World Wide Web Consortium has established a new translation
> policy for its documents [http://www.w3.org/2005/02/TranslationPolicy]
> that sets out a validation process for translations to become official,
> thereby helping to avoid a fragmentation of W3C standards.
> 
> Catalan is the language of Catalonia. It has the category of official
> language along with Spanish, which is official throughout the Spanish
> State. Catalan is also the language of an extensive area covering the
> eastern part of the Spanish State (the Balearic Islands, Valencia, and a
> part of Aragon -the Franja de Ponent or Western Marches-), Andorra,
> where it is the only official language, the south of France (the
> so-called Northern Catalonia) and the Italian city of Alghero. As a
> whole, the Catalan language is spoken in a territory of 68.000 km²
> inhabited by 11 million people. Of these, it is estimated that 7,5
> millions are able to speak it, while 10 million can understand it [1].
> 
> The Librarianship and Documentation Faculty of the University of
> Barcelona University is interested in becoming the Lead Translation
> Organization for translating the Web Content Accessibility
> Guidelines(WCAG), version 1.0, into Catalan.
> 
> In order to coordinate the revision of the translation, the
> Librarianship and Documentation Faculty of the University of Barcelona
> has contacted various stakeholders interested in, or affected by, these
> guidelines:
> 
> * Spanish Office of World Wide Web Consortium [ii]: This consortium has
> agreed to give backing to the translation but can not actively
> participate in the validation, as no one in the organization has a
> command of Catalan.
> 
> * ONCE Foundation (Fundació ONCE) [iii]: The ONCE Foundation for
> Cooperation and Social Integration of Persons with Disabilities, created
> in February 1988 by an agreement of the General Council of ONCE
> [National  Organisation for the Blind in Spain] the Foundation serves as
> an instrument for cooperation and solidarity on the part of blind
> persons in Spain toward other communities of disabled persons in order
> to improve the conditions of their lives.  The main objective of the
> ONCE Foundation consists of carrying out programmes for integration into
> the labour force --training and employment for persons with
> disabilities- and for universal accessibility for overcoming all types
> of barriers.  Since its creation in 1988, the ONCE Foundation has
> provided support to some 20,000 projects, presented by individuals and
> legal entities, amounting to over 1,100 million euros. In the past three
> years the Foundation has also been focussing its efforts on the field of
> accessibility of new technologies in general and of the Internet, which
> is a paradigm of communication and communication/information
> technologies.  As such, the ONCE Foundation --among other activities--
> is a member of the Governing Committee of WAI (Web Accessibility
> Initiative) and of the Advisory Committee of W3C.
> 
> * SIDAR Foundation [iv]: The Sidar Foundations that holds the
> Iber-American Seminar on Disability and Accessibility on the Net
> (Seminario Iberoamericano sobre Discapacidad y Accesibilidad a la Red
> (SIDAR)): This Seminar, constituted in 1997, is composed of experts in
> new technologies and accessibility, representatives of institutions and
> associations dealing with disabilities, technological companies, public
> sector, and individuals interested in the field. The main goal of the
> Sidar Foundation is to conduct research and activities leading to the
> development of an accessible and inclusive Information Society. As its
> main goal, the SIDAR aims to stimulate web accessibility design
> (universal design) and to promote the presence of "disability" on the
> Internet. This entity has disseminated the WAI guidelines widely,
> especially in Spain, Portugal and Latin America.
> 
> * Foundation "Manuel Caragol" for the Blind (Fundació de Cecs Manuel
> Caragol)[v] : This private foundation that covers the whole of Spain is
> very active in promoting assistive technology for visually impaired
> persons. Some activities are: free software distribution, training about
> assistive technology software, and support to the blind users.
> 
> * Computer-Human Interaction Association (Associació Interació
> Persona-Ordinador (AIPO)) [vi]:  This entity, also Iber-American in
> scope, brings together teachers, researchers and companies working in
> the area of computer-human interaction. AIPO has promoted teaching
> programs in usability and accessibility in Spain through the creation of
> various electronic resources for providing teaching support and through
> the establishment of a specific masters degree in computer-human
> interaction. The Association organizes an annual international congress
> in the field.
> 
> 
> * TERMCAT [vii]: This consortium is made up of the government of
> Catalonia ("Generalitat de Catalunya"), the Institut of Catalan Studies
> ("Institut d'Estudis Catalans"), which acts as the academy of the
> Catalan language, and the Consortium for Linguistic Standardization
> ("Consorci per a la Normalització Lingüística"). As a leading center in
> the field of terminology, TERMCAT works to guarantee the quality and
> availability of resources and working methods to be put into practice in
> the public and private sectors. The Center also promotes the
> participation and involvement of the entire society in all its
> activities in order to motivate, within a multilingual scenario, the
> development of terminology in Catalan and to contribute to the general
> progress of this language in all social settings.
> 
> These different stakeholder institutions, brought together to
> collaborate on the translation, offer a broad range of expertise and
> experience: an official representative of content (W3C Consortium); an
> official representative for the language (TERMCAT); local and national
> organizations working with persons with disabilities (ONCE); public
> sector entities and individuals concerned with accessibility (SIDAR and
> Manuel Caragol Foundation); and research and teaching institutions and
> industry (AIPO). All of them have been invited, and have agreed, to
> participate in the translation of WCAG 1.0 to Catalan. The translation
> has the technical backing of the Linguistic Services at the University
> of Barcelona as well.
> 
> As established by the W3C translation policy, and given that the
> document to be translated forms part of the WAI guidelines, the first
> step of this project will be the translation into Catalan of the basic
> glossary of WAI documents [http://www.w3.org/WAI/glossary/basic.html].
> 
> We believe that we comply with all the requirements stated in the base
> document for official translations in order to become a Lead Translation
> Organization for preparing the Catalan version of WCAG 1.0. We also wish
> to express our intention to translate WCAG 2.0 guidelines as soon as
> they become an approved W3C recommendation.
> 
> Barcelona, 27th February 2006
> 
> [1] Text taken from [http://www.gencat.net/catalunya/cat/llengua.htm]
> 
> [i] Facultat de Biblioteconomia i Documentació
> c/Melcior de Palau 140
> 08014 Barcelona
> Tel. 93 4035758
> Fax. 93 4025770
> Tel.: 93 403 57 58 - Fax: 93 403 57 72
> bibdoc@ub.edu
> http://www.ub.es/biblio
> 
> [ii] W3C Oficina Española
> Edificio CTIC
> Parque Científico Tecnológico de Gijón
> 33203 GIJÓN
> ASTURIAS • ESPAÑA
> Tel: +34 984 39 06 16
> Fax: +34 984 39 06 12
> email: info@w3c.es
> www.w3c.es/
> 
> [iii] Fundació ONCE
> c/ Sebastian Herrera, 15
> Madrid
> http://www.fundaciononce.es
> dae@fundaciononce.es
> 
> [iv] SIDAR
> Attn. Emmanuelle Gutiérrez
> Sancho Dávila 35
> 28028 Madrid
> España
> Tel. 91 7257147
> Fax. 91 3614493
> http://www.sidar.org
> direccion@sidar.org
> 
> [v] Fundació de cecs Manuel Caragol
> c/ Girona, 78, 3r, 3ª
> 08009 Barcelona
> Tel: +34 93 2653909
> E-mail: mail@funcaragol.org
> 
> [vi] AIPO
> c/Campus de Cartuja s/n
> Facultad de Psicología
> Granada
> http://www.aipo.es
> 
> [vii] TERMCAT
> Diputació 119, 5ª
> 08015 Barcelona
> Tel. 934526161
> Fax. 93451 6437
> http://www.termcat.net/
> informacio@termcat.net
> 
> 

-- 

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/