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Multilingual Computing
Section editor
Ann Tothill, APC
AATothill@apc.org
Introduction
ItrainOnline uses the term "Multilingual Computing" to cover a wide range of issues facing Internet users, from non-Latin character sets and encoding to developing web sites for multilingual audiences.
Whether your main language is English and you need to communicate with a global audience, or you are looking for support for your own language in a web dominated by English, the resources listed below should assist you. A good starting point is the Techsoup article on Languages and the Internet.
Machine translation is far from perfect, but it can help you get an idea of the meaning of a web site or short text in another language. A selection of e-mail and web-based translation tools are listed below. Babel Not: Machine Translation for the Technical Communicator
Developed by: Sandra Bologna, WTB Language Group
Type of resource: Web article
Target audience: General
Cost: Free access
Machine Translation (MT) is the automatic translation of text from one language into another. This article by the WTB Language Group, Inc. looks at when machine translation is useful and how to prepare documents for machine translation.
Dhttp://www.wintranslation.com/articles/art05_0004_
machinetranslation.htm
The Unique Unicode
Developed by: Ubiquity
Type of resource: Web article
Target audience: General
Cost: Free access
"The Unicode character set is a character set projected to represent the writing schemes of all of the world's major languages. Unicode provides a unique number for every character, no matter what the platform, what the programme, or what the language." Read the full article by Mir Lutful Kabir Saadi for a good basic introduction to Unicode.
Dhttp://www.acm.org/ubiquity/views/v6i21_saadi.html
Unicode and Multilingual Support in HTML, Fonts, Web Browsers and Other Applications
Developed by: Alan Wood
Type of resource: Web site
Target audience: General
Cost: Free access
"Have you ever tried to include a passage in a different alphabet in one of your documents, for example a quotation in Russian in an English document, only to find that you have no Cyrillic characters available? Or sent a Spanish document in electronic form to someone in Greece, only to be told that the accented Latin characters have been replaced by Greek characters? Or produced a Web page that includes technical symbols and found that it works with Windows but not with Mac OS or Unix?" Alan Wood shows you how to avoid these problems.
Dhttp://www.alanwood.net/unicode/
Multilingual Web Sites
Developed by: TechSoup
Type of resource: Case study
Target audience: General
Cost: Free access
A short case study on the development of Multikulti, a UK site providing welfare-related information in eleven languages.
Dhttp://techsoup.org/howto/articlepage.cfm?ArticleI
d=560
Using language information in XHTML, HTML and CSS
Developed by: W3C
Type of resource: Web guide
Target audience: General
Cost: Free access
This W3C guide looks at the importance of providing information about the languages used on web pages, and takes you through the basic steps you need to take.
Dhttp://www.w3.org/International/tutorials/tutorial
-lang/
Introduction to Multilingual Computing
Developed by: Center for Educational Technology
Type of resource: website
Target audience: General
Cost: Free access
The Center for Educational Technology's section on Multilingual Computing offers basic definitions of character sets and encoding, and overviews common encodings. The feature covers the use of mutliple languages on Windows and MAC operating systems, and how to obtain special characters (ie, characters with accents) in both, as well as how to facilitate multiple lanuage character display on the web.
Dhttp://www.cet.middlebury.edu/rsrc_multilingual_in
tro.php
Is Your Website Lost in Translation? Top Ten Mistakes that companies make when creating multilingual websites
Developed by: Self SEO
Type of resource: Web article
Target audience: General
Cost: Free access
Huiping Iler looks at mistakes ranging from not translating keywords properly to not communicating effectively with translators.
Dhttp://www.selfseo.com/story-18644.php
Multilingual Computing Resources Glossary
Developed by: Multilingual Computing Resources
Type of resource: website
Target audience: General
Cost: Free access
A glossary of terms related to multilingual computing. The glossary details different standards as well as linguistic definitions to better understand the complexity of multilingual needs. In English and Japanese.
Dhttp://mlcr.nagaokaut.ac.jp/main1/glossary.html
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