Living in a multiligual world: Internationalization for Web 2.0 Applications

i18n for Web 2.0
Why and how to internationalize your Web 2.0
application

Lars Trieloff, Day Software

Why internationalize?
International audiences want localized user interfaces.

Lars Trieloff
• Product Manager, Founder,
Blogger, Open Source
Coder

• Languages I understand:

• German, English

• Languages I do not
understand:

• Mandarin, Hindi, Spanish,
Arabic, Russian, Portuguese,
Bengali, Malay, French, Japanese,
Farsi, Urdu, Punjabi, Vietnamese, Tamil,
Wu, Javanese, Turkish, Telugu, Korean, Marathi, Italian, Thai,
cantonese, gujarati, polish, kannada, burmese (and all other)

Do it yourself, or someone else will
do it

What is different in Web
2.0 internationalization?

Web 2.0
internationalization
• Web sites become Web applications

• The Web as a platform

• This means:

• Internationalize your plain old Web site

• Internationalize your rich internet applications

• Javascript, Flash, Silverlight, and more to come

• Internationalize your desktop applications

Challenge

The internationalization problem is multiplied due
to use of different technologies in Web and rich
internet applications as well as desktop applications

Solution

Consolidation of internationalization technology: Each
technology has its own internationalization framework:
We need a common framework for all of them

What to do
• Keep all internationalization data in one place

• Extract internationalization strings from
application parts

• repeatedly

• automatically

• Let the applications pull the i18n strings

What do do
Web
Web
application
application
source code
Translator

RIA source String Localization
RIA
code Extractor Database
Intermediate
Converter

desktop
Intermediate desktop
application
Format application
source code
Translator

Example
How we did it in Mindquarry

Our technology
Our problem
• Web application framework: Apache
Cocoon, with Cocoon i18n Transformer

• Rich internet application framework: Dojo
Toolkit, with dojo.i18n.*

• Desktop client: Java and SWT, with Java
Message Bundles

Steps to consolidated
i18n
1. Find a common i18n database
format
2. Extract internationalizable content
automatically
3. Attach applications to i18n
database

1. i18n database
format
• QT Linguist .ts files
• XML files, easy to process
• QT Linguist is a good, easy-to-
use and free translation editor
• Can be used by non-
programmers

2. Automatic string
extraction
• We have three types of source code: XML,
Java and Javascript

• XML
• Ruby script parses all XML source code,
finds internationalizable strings not yet in
database and adds them

• Java and Javascript, similar with a more
complex parser

3.1. Attach Cocoon
messages.ts
• Apache Cocoon‘s (QT Linguist)

databases are XML files XSLT

• Transformation via
XSLT messages_de.xml
messages_de.xml
(Cocoon i18n)
(Cocoon i18n)

• Multiple output files, one
for each language Apache Cocoon

3.2. Attach Dojo
messages.ts
(QT Linguist)

• Dojo uses JSON as
XSLT
format messages_de.xml
messages_de.xml
(Cocoon i18n)
(Cocoon i18n)

• Transformation via
XSLT Apache Cocoon

• Handled dynamically via messages_de.js
messages_de.js
(Dojo i18n)
(Dojo i18n)
Cocoon
Dojo Widget

3.3. Attach Java
• Message Bundle Reader
messages.ts
is overwritten
(QT Linguist)

• Uses internationalization
database directory

• i18n Adapter
Internationalization
database is being
Desktop Client
distributed with desktop
client

How to get translations

do it yourself

¥ $
€

do it yourself pay someone

¥ $
€

do it yourself pay someone ask your users

User-contributed
• The holy grail

• Build a community and
website at the same
time

• But hard to achieve

• Wikipedia

• Open Source projects

Build your own
translation
website
Allows users to sign-up,
contribute localization strings,
costly, but allows for automatic
post-processing, validation and
quality-control.

Ad-hoc-
translations: use
a wiki
Allows users to contribute
localization strings without sign-
up, easy to deploy, but requires
manual post-processing,
validation and quality-control.

Pootle: OSS for
web-based
translations
GPL-software, based on Python,
works with .po or XLIFF, integration
with version control, basic project
management, used by 20+ open
source projects

http://pootle.wordforge.org

More challenges in Web
2.0 internationalization

• User-generated content
• Rich Web design

User-generated content
• User-generated content is great

• But hard to translate

• But translating it increases network effects

• English speaking users benefit from content
generated by German speaking users

• Is there a (partial) solution?

Solution
• Structured Content

• Sometimes easier to
translate

• ratings

• locations

• time & date

• Sometimes it is still hard

• tags

Graphical text
• Looks great
• But hard to internationalize
• can break calculated box sizes,
• re-creation necessary
• Do not do it
• unless you can do it right
• create dynamically on server

Wrap-Up

• Web 2.0 needs internationalization
• Consolidate i18n over apps and platforms
• Allow for user-contributed translations
• Make it automated, repeatable and cheap

Thank you very much
lars@trieloff.net

For more information, see my weblog at
http://weblogs.goshaky.com/weblogs/lars

Living in a multiligual world: Internationalization for Web 2.0 Applications

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