Re: Accept-Language and W3C-Translations

Hello Stefan,

At 01:33 02/10/10 +0200, Stefan Mintert wrote:

>Bjoern Hoehrmann wrote:
> >
> > This is btw. offtopic here, I suggest to reply to either the spec-prod
> > or the w3c-translators mailing list.
>
>thanks. i'm aware of both mentioned mailinglist. i posted to intl-list
>because i believe it _is_ an issue of internationalization. of course my
>question is not a technical question as - for example - character
>encodings.

I think Bjoern is right that this topic would best be discussed on
[email protected]. While there is some relationship to the
topics on [email protected], it's better to discuss the
topic on the list most suited to it. I have therefore cross-posted
to it; please put followups only on [email protected].
For people on [email protected], please have a look at
the previous postings in this thread starting at
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-international/2002OctDec/0012.html.


>in our german translation project we finished a number of translations
>in the past weeks. i had to contact at least five w3c team members to
>give them the information about a new translation (a list of german
>translations is maintained at the german w3c office; for each spec (or
>WG) another person is responsible for a list of translations of this
>particular spec (or WG)). btw: still not all of the available
>translations are listed at the appropriate places (haven't checked
>recently); i'm giving up...

Please don't give up! Everybody is busy, nobody is perfect in
answering all their email.


>a centralized approach would ease the job. one single list of
>translations (or maybe one for each foreign language) in a simple
>xml-format to attach some metadata (which spec, which language and so
>on). it would be quite easy to produce a list of translations for any
>foreign language.

One of my long-term plans is to move translations from the current
mail-based notification system to a Web forms based system, which
would make it much easier to maintain the data and produce pages
by spec and by language. One of the preconditions of such a system,
namely to have a database of W3C Tech Reports, is in the works now,
so I might give it a try sometime. Such a system would clearly
improve the situation, but it's quite some work to set it up.
(if anybody wants to help, please tell me)


>furthermore this list could be used when displaying a
>spec: the Accept-Language header field is evaluated, the translations
>list is checked for a corresponding translation and the spec will be
>delivered to the client with the note "a translation in your language is
>available".
>that's all and it _is_ possible. no need to touch a spec.

It definitely would be possible technically, but it would
mean that the publication policy of W3C (which Bjoern explained)
is changed quite a bit.

Also, please note that in HTTP, there is functionality (Vary
headers,...) that would allow this data to be sent separate
from the actual document. However, one would then need a browser
that picks up that information. Also, we would need to hack
the server, so that it sends the English version even when
asked for the German one. [now this paragraph is actually
a topic that's appropriate for www-international]

Regards,    Martin.