Open, web-based internationalization and localization tools

Abstract

As many software applications have moved from a desktop software deployment model to a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model so we have seen tool vendors in the language service industry move to a SaaS model, e.g., for web-based Computer Assisted Translation (CAT) tools. However, many of these offerings fail to take full advantage of the Open Web Platform, i.e., the rich set of web browser-based APIs linked to HTML5. We examine the interoperability landscape that developers of web-based translation tools can benefit from, and in particular the potential offered by the open metadata defined in the W3C’s (World Wide Web Consortium) recent Internationalization Tag Set v2.0 Recommendation. We examine how this can be used in conjunction with the XML Localisation Interchange File Format (XLIFF) standardized by OASIS to exchange translation jobs between servers and Javascript-based CAT tools running in the web browser. We also explore how such open metadata can support activities in the multilingual web processing chain before and after translation.