Re: [WSG] multilingual website advice
A lot of Richard's material and material by other members of the W3C Core I18N WG are quite useful. Have a look at http://www.w3.org/International/ Some additional thoughts. You're approach really depends on the number of languages you need to support and the diversity of languages and writing scripts. The greater the diversity and the number of languages the more care you need to take with your internationalization architecture. You need to make sure that all the components of the web site is handling all languages and encodings correctly. if you are lucky you'll be working with all the easy languages (European, Japanese, Chinese and Korean). Otherwise, some additional points to consider: * Preferred layouts of pages may change between languages. Cultural preferences will vary between dense and compact layouts on one hand to open and spacious layouts on the other. What constitutes good and optimal de sign is culture based. * Your user interface needs to be mirrorable. * Best to avoid CSS rules containing text-align: justify; Proper justification really requires CSS3 support, and certain browsers have bugs rendering justified text and break complex script rendering. * For most languages line breaking will be handled automatically (depending on the language and the operating system version in use). For some languages you may require makeshift or manual line breaking techniques. * If you are supporting multiple languages and writing scripts within one site, consider using language specific styling using the language pseudo selector. IE can not use this CSS selector, but useful javascript libraries offer mechanisms for simulating support. * Generic font family declarations are meaningless for some writing scripts. Olly Hodgson wrote: On 11/1/07, Andrew Harris [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I'm asking for any gems of wisdom - links or first hand advice, mostly technical, but anything that deals with the pitfalls in building arabic websites would be great. I found Richard Ishida's @media07 presentation, Designing for International Users: Practical Tips rather enlightening. The audio and slides are available from http://www.vivabit.com/atmedia2007/europe/schedule/ Cheers, -- Andrew Cunningham Research and Development Coordinator (Vicnet) State Library of Victoria 328 Swanston Street Melbourne VIC 3000 Australia Email: andrewc+AEA-vicnet.net.au Alt. email: lang.support+AEA-gmail.com Ph: +613-8664-7430Fax:+613-9639-2175 Mob: 0421-450-816 http://www.slv.vic.gov.au/http://www.vicnet.net.au/ http://www.openroad.net.au/ http://www.mylanguage.gov.au/ http://home.vicnet.net.au/~andrewc/ *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
Re: [WSG] multilingual website advice
One other thing I forgot to emotion, if you are supporting East or West African languages, or Vietnamese then Unicode normalisation support will be critical. Andrew -- Andrew Cunningham Research and Development Coordinator (Vicnet) State Library of Victoria 328 Swanston Street Melbourne VIC 3000 Australia Email: andrewc+AEA-vicnet.net.au Alt. email: lang.support+AEA-gmail.com Ph: +613-8664-7430Fax:+613-9639-2175 Mob: 0421-450-816 http://www.slv.vic.gov.au/http://www.vicnet.net.au/ http://www.openroad.net.au/ http://www.mylanguage.gov.au/ http://home.vicnet.net.au/~andrewc/ *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
Re: [WSG] multilingual website advice
Certain Islamic cultures have restrictions on images of any living thing - not just people. There are also differences of opinion as to whether this applies to just drawings or to photographs too. See: http://www.muhajabah.com/pictures-fiqh.htm Whilst some things of these may be unoffensive when present on Western Websites, for a Website aimed at that community it may be offensive (or at least seem impolite or uncaring). As others have said, you really need advice from those who know and understand the sensibilities of your target audience. On Fri, November 2, 2007 8:51 am, Michael MD wrote: Another issue is graphics... if you've got any stock images of people like some sites do, you have to think about what certain cultures might think about how people dress. There are also sensitivities in some cultures about photos of people who have passed away. *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
Re: [WSG] multilingual website advice
Another issue is graphics... if you've got any stock images of people like some sites do, you have to think about what certain cultures might think about how people dress. There are also sensitivities in some cultures about photos of people who have passed away. *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
Re: [WSG] multilingual website advice
On 11/1/07, Andrew Harris [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I'm asking for any gems of wisdom - links or first hand advice, mostly technical, but anything that deals with the pitfalls in building arabic websites would be great. I found Richard Ishida's @media07 presentation, Designing for International Users: Practical Tips rather enlightening. The audio and slides are available from http://www.vivabit.com/atmedia2007/europe/schedule/ Cheers, -- Olly Hodgson http://thinkdrastic.net/ *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
Re: [WSG] multilingual website advice
On 11/1/07, Andrew Harris [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi all, I've been asked to work on a multilingual website - including rtl scripts. I've done bits and pieces before, but always other languages in predominantly english websites. Although I see the problems as mainly technical, I'm getting vibes from others in the team about some mysterious 'cultural sensitivities' that we'll have to consider as the audience in this case includes the Islamic community. Perhaps foolishly, I had assumed that a sensibly designed website, free of pr0n ads and political cartoons, would be acceptable in most cultures, but maybe I'm just naive. One issue is color - some colors are taboo in various cultures and you want to know about this if the site is going to be marketed to a global audience. I can't find you many links about this but I did find this one: http://blogs.ittoolbox.com/eai/implementation/archives/internationalization-of-documents-documentation-16608 Another issue is graphics... if you've got any stock images of people like some sites do, you have to think about what certain cultures might think about how people dress. -- -- Christian Montoya christianmontoya.net *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
RE: [WSG] multilingual website advice
Andrew, I don't know about cultural sensitivities; best that you start talking to Islamic people and your specific audience as early as possible! I've got a couple of Islamic friends and they've never mentioned any deep-seated resentment of the internet, except a general awareness of how american and anglo it can be. I've worked with Islamic people on some simple community work, and found a huge range of cultural preferences concerning formality of dress and speech, etc. I wouldn't assume anything about cultural preferences without asking first. I can say that creating a controlled vocabularly is important: you'll need to determine the precise mapping between various labels and instructions before you can design and develop a navigation structure and labels on controls etc. Whilst you can source content from different database tables specific to the language, sourcing the labels for controls and navigation may come from a different part of the application. You'll also have to closely control the character encoding and language for both browser display and for search engines. In my experience, multilingual websites involve: sub-directories for images and css for different languages, different records for langauge specific content, look-up tables for cross-language searching, language and geo-targeting for active detection of language preference, a source for navigation and control labels, a multi-lingual data source for error messages, page and character encoding, different time and date formats and the possibility that you have a user from one language group accessing from a computer that appears to be from another language group (so, user control of language and geo-targeting configuration). Cheers Paul Paul Minty Director mintleaf studio We design create stylish websites Post: Box 6 108 Flinders Street Melbourne VIC 3000 Level 2 108 Flinders Street Melbourne T. 03 9662 9344 F. 03 9662 9255 M. 0418 307 475 [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.mintleafstudio.com.au -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Andrew Harris Sent: Friday, 2 November 2007 10:46 AM To: WSG Subject: [WSG] multilingual website advice Hi all, I've been asked to work on a multilingual website - including rtl scripts. I've done bits and pieces before, but always other languages in predominantly english websites. Although I see the problems as mainly technical, I'm getting vibes from others in the team about some mysterious 'cultural sensitivities' that we'll have to consider as the audience in this case includes the Islamic community. Perhaps foolishly, I had assumed that a sensibly designed website, free of pr0n ads and political cartoons, would be acceptable in most cultures, but maybe I'm just naive. I'm asking for any gems of wisdom - links or first hand advice, mostly technical, but anything that deals with the pitfalls in building arabic websites would be great. (I should point out the obvious one, we will be engaging native speakers and expert editors - not simply relying on babelfish ;-) Thanks in advance. -- Andrew Harris [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.woowoowoo.com ~~~ * ~~~ *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
Re: [WSG] multilingual website advice
Added to all the other advice already given, I'd also suggest that web typography be tailored for each language. How some of the tags render may need to be changed from language to language (not just font families, styles, weight, size and leading). Consider how the following tags should render: ol, ul, em, strong, cite. Use of underlining on links may impact on some writing scripts. On Windows many scripts do not have a monospaced font so be careful with styling pre, tt, textarea, input[type=”textarea”], option using bold and italic text can be problematic since not all writing scripts on Windows come with italic, bold or bold italic faces. Most of the hard word is actually in the admin/editorial interfaces, tracking language of articles. Allowing proper typographic and font display in editing environment, correct bidi behaviour in editing environment, buttons or mechanisms for marking up change of language (if you need to comply with WCAG 1.0) the ability to add dir attributes to elements in editing environment, etc. Most CMS editing environments work well in monolingual environments, and may be well internationalised. But if you are adding content in multiple languages and writing scripts through a single editing environment more work may be needed to tweak the editing environment. Andrew C Andrew Harris wrote: Hi all, I've been asked to work on a multilingual website - including rtl scripts. I've done bits and pieces before, but always other languages in predominantly english websites. Although I see the problems as mainly technical, I'm getting vibes from others in the team about some mysterious 'cultural sensitivities' that we'll have to consider as the audience in this case includes the Islamic community. Perhaps foolishly, I had assumed that a sensibly designed website, free of pr0n ads and political cartoons, would be acceptable in most cultures, but maybe I'm just naive. I'm asking for any gems of wisdom - links or first hand advice, mostly technical, but anything that deals with the pitfalls in building arabic websites would be great. (I should point out the obvious one, we will be engaging native speakers and expert editors - not simply relying on babelfish ;-) Thanks in advance. -- Andrew Cunningham Research and Development Coordinator (Vicnet) State Library of Victoria 328 Swanston Street Melbourne VIC 3000 Australia Email: andrewc+AEA-vicnet.net.au Alt. email: lang.support+AEA-gmail.com Ph: +613-8664-7430Fax:+613-9639-2175 Mob: 0421-450-816 http://www.slv.vic.gov.au/http://www.vicnet.net.au/ http://www.openroad.net.au/ http://www.mylanguage.gov.au/ http://home.vicnet.net.au/~andrewc/ *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
