OASIS XML Localisation Interchange File Format (XLIFF) TC

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Re: [xliff] Uniqueness of language pair

  • 1.  Re: [xliff] Uniqueness of language pair

    Posted 01-16-2012 18:56
    Stephan, would you be able to join the TC in historically short time frame and help elaborate the multilingual behavior?  At present, majority of XLIFF TC seems to be in favor of discarding the feature. I myself would like to see it only as a limited purpose bulk exchange feature. Bryan provided a straw man of how the multilingualism might be handled (later in this thread). Although neither Bryan nor I opt for multilingualism strongly. We think that it is a feature potentially intriguing for CMS providers and enterprise translation buyers. Thanks and regards dF Dr. David Filip ======================= LRC CNGL LT-Web CSIS University of Limerick, Ireland telephone: +353-6120-2781 mobile:  +353-86-049-34-68 facsimile: +353-6120-2734 mailto: david.filip@ul.ie On Fri, Jan 6, 2012 at 09:01, Stephan Bohmig < sbohmig@wordbee.com > wrote: Hi David,   Thank you for forwarding this message!   As you know well, I am convinced that the xliff standard should become multilingual.   We have some clients who dropped xliff for this language limitation and instead opted for other xml formats (we support localization of multi-lingual xmls).   Therefore, I am happy to defend such an idea.   Kind regards, Stephan       From: Dr. David Filip [mailto: David.Filip@ul.ie ] Sent: vendredi 6 janvier 2012 03:09 To: Rodolfo M. Raya; Stephan Böhmig Cc: xliff@lists.oasis-open.org Subject: Re: [xliff] Uniqueness of language pair   Thanks Rodolfo, I would first try and find a champion for this feature. If such a champion is found I would give him/her some time for thinking of possible implementations. If a champion is not found soon, the feature should be moved  to 3, but next meting might be to quick, IMHO.   I would expect the champion to be a large publisher or a cloud based TMS provider, if anyone at all. We might be able to bring Stephan from Wordbee to the table after all..   Rgds dF Dr. David Filip ======================= LRC CNGL LT-Web CSIS University of Limerick, Ireland telephone:  +353-6120-2781 mobile:  +353-86-049-34-68 facsimile:  +353-6120-2734 mailto: david.filip@ul.ie On Thu, Jan 5, 2012 at 21:23, Rodolfo M. Raya < rmraya@maxprograms.com > wrote:   Hi David,   If we opt for having multilingual XLIFF files, there is no reason for not allowing their use in translation editors.   Editing a multilingual XLIFF file should be as easy as editing a bilingual file for the end user. Designing an editor that can handle multilingual files is not a trivial task but can be done.   As developer of XLIFF editors, I certainly prefer XLIFF files to be bilingual. Nevertheless, I admit that language service providers may prefer multilingual XLIFF documents.   The wiki has a feature request for “Ability to store Multilingual Content” (item 2.12 in the feature tracking page). It is not clear how this can be achieved and there is no proposal for implementation.   Perhaps we should vote whether we want bilingual or multilingual files in next meeting and send this pending item to section 1) or 3). If it goes to section 1), we need to start working right now on how multilingualism will be implemented in XLIFF 2.0 because that affects the elements we define. It would not be the same to have multiple <file> elements, each one with its own language pair, than to have a single <file> and multiple <target> elements per segment.   Regards, Rodolfo -- Rodolfo M. Raya       rmraya@maxprograms.com Maxprograms       http://www.maxprograms.com   From: xliff@lists.oasis-open.org [mailto: xliff@lists.oasis-open.org ] On Behalf Of Dr. David Filip Sent: Thursday, January 05, 2012 6:38 PM To: Rodolfo M. Raya Cc: xliff@lists.oasis-open.org Subject: Re: [xliff] Uniqueness of language pair   Thanks Rodolfo, for opening this. I think that it makes perfect sense to set language pair uniqueness constraint at the file level. I was talking to Wordbee in summer trying to recruit them for the TC. Anyway, Wordbee (as our customer) would represent a business need for bulk exchange of multilingual collections. I assume that a collection of different files with various source and target languages would do the trick. Nevertheless, I suspect that Stephan (Wordbee CTO and cowner) would be even more radical than that, and that he would simply want to allow systematically multilingual use of multiple targets. I quote Wordbee position to impartially illustrate an existing business need. I personally would use multilingual formats only with utmost caution, as they pose obvious business process issues, e.g. problematic merging to central data store. If we allowed some controlled sort of multilingualism (multi- in the sense of more than bi-) [if I remember correctly, Andrzej had a good study of why multilingual formats are to be discouraged in translation automation], we would need to explicitly say in processing requirements, that this format MUST NOT be used in and for translation editors. We would need to specify canonical transforms to facilitate canonical behavior of translation editors, that should be bilingual. The multilingual bulk exchange construct should be restricted to CMS<->TMS and TMS<->TMS bulk exchange. [I am aware that alt-trans target is sometimes being used multilngually, I am however not sure what are the support levels for this in tools.. IMHO this is a seprate discussion..]   Rgds dF   Dr. David Filip ======================= LRC CNGL LT-Web CSIS University of Limerick, Ireland telephone:  +353-6120-2781 mobile:  +353-86-049-34-68 facsimile:  +353-6120-2734 mailto: david.filip@ul.ie   On Thu, Jan 5, 2012 at 11:31, Rodolfo M. Raya < rmraya@maxprograms.com > wrote: Hi,   In an XLIFF 1.2 document you may have multiple <file> elements and they could have different source/target languages. In theory, that would allow someone to create an XLIFF document with many copies of the same <file> element, each having a different target language. In practice, that would be a bad idea as tools that work with XLIFF usually expect bilingual documents.   It might be interesting for XLIFF 2.0 to set source and target language in the <xliff> element and let all <file> children inherit the declared language pair.   Opinions?   Regards, Rodolfo -- Rodolfo M. Raya       rmraya@maxprograms.com Maxprograms       http://www.maxprograms.com