RE: finished hebrew translation of web stylesheets homepage

> From: Bert Bos [mailto:bert@w3.org]
> Sent: 18 August 2009 14:14
> > Also, I would have expected the local links bar to be on the left,
> > and the link text to be right-aligned, and the "Activities Tech.
> > reports Translations Software Site index Search" to be alongside it
> > (ie. moved to the left).  The W3C icon would be to the right.
> 
> That changes the look of the page considerably. It wouldn't be just a
> translation anymore. But, as I said in my previous message, this is no
> doubt a matter of interpretation and taste. You can ask what is the
> Hebrew equivalent of the English page like you can ask who is the
> French analogue of the British queen. Does the analogous layout have a
> menu on the right? (Is president Sarkozy the queen of France?) Or does
> it have a menu on the right? (Is Sarkozy's wife Carla the queen of
> France?)

I personally don't think that the page layout is a question of
interpretation and taste in this case. I think the main argument has to do
with reading direction.  If you place things on the page horizontally, you
often arrange them in English from left to right because that corresponds to
the way people are expected to scan the page.  That would logically indicate
that the layout would be mirrored in Hebrew and Arabic.  Leaving the local
links bar on the right would lead to visual consistency in 'the overall look
of the page', but only to a certain point, since lines and other objects
such as bulleted lists, tables, floats, etc flow rtl. However it breaks the
conceptual and actually practical consistency related to positioning of the
local links bar relative to the text direction, which I suspect may be more
important than the semi-visual consistency.

It also looks odd that the little page turnovers on the icons in the right
column are at the start of the text, and slightly too close to the first
character.

Mirroring of layout is not an common approach.  Application chrome such as
Firefox in Hebrew or Arabic is typically mirror-imaged. It's easy to find
examples of web pages too (eg. http://www.google.co.uk/preferences?hl=iw or
http://www.ibm.com/il/he/ were the first two I looked for).

I think we should ask a Hebrew or Arabic speaker how it should look ideally.
To me it looks like we didn't finish the job when we did the translation. 

Just my 2p.

RI

============
Richard Ishida
Internationalization Lead
W3C (World Wide Web Consortium)

http://www.w3.org/International/
http://rishida.net/

Received on Tuesday, 18 August 2009 16:22:01 UTC