Best Regards,
Gershon
---
Gershon L
Joseph
Member, OASIS DITA and DocBook Technical Committees
Director of
Technology and Single Sourcing
Tech-Tav Documentation Ltd.
From:
[mailto:]
Sent: Monday, June 05, 2006 2:19
PM
To:
Cc: ; 'Bryan
Schnabel'; ; ;
; ; ;
; 'Howard.Schwartz'; ; 'Jennifer Linton';
; ; ;
; ;
Subject: Re: Examples of multilingual
documents
Here are a few more examples:
1. Government forms (and instructions
on filling out forms) and publications in many multilingual countries - Canada,
Hong Kong, Singapore, Switzerland, Ireland, Malaysia, India. Almost all
immigration and custom forms (with the US as a major exception).
2. Magazines in some countries.
Airlines inflight magazines (some have different sections while other have
different languages on the same page - to save on reprinting pictures). I
recently flew on Singapore Airlines which has a very extensive on-demand movies,
with movies from different countries. On one page of their magazine they
show movies from Hong Kong, Korea, India, France, and Japan, with descriptions
in the corresponding language.
Regards,
Charles Pau
Director, Globalization
Architecture and Technology
IBM
Tel. +1-617-751-4179 IBM Tie-Line
364-4116
e-mail: , Notes mail: Charles
Pau/Cambridge/IBM@Lotus
URL :
http://www.ibm.com/software/globalization
"Tell the rich of the midnight
sighing of the poor, lest heedlessness lead them into the path of destruction,
and deprive them of the Tree of Wealth." - Bahá’u’lláh
"Gershon L Joseph"
<>
06/05/2006 03:15 AM
Please respond
to
gershon
To
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<>, "'Bryan Schnabel'"
<>, <>,
<>, <>,
<>, <>,
<>, "'Howard.Schwartz'"
<>, "'Jennifer Linton'"
<>,
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cc
Subject
Examples of multilingual
documents
Following up on action items from last week, here are some
multilingual
documents I've come across:
1. A single user manual
containing the product's documentation in multiple
languages (in Israel,
typically English, Hebrew, Arabic and several European
languages like French,
German, Italian, Greek). I've often seen this with
manuals that accompany
mobile phones, cameras, and small electronic
equipment. The medical industry
also produces a single document (typically
printed on 2 sides of a single
sheet of paper) that documents everything
about the medication in every
language required by the law of the country
it's sold in. In Israel that
includes Hebrew, Arabic, English, Russian, and
a few more I can't think of
off-hand. In South Africa it used to be English,
Afrikaans, and several of
the local African languages. I think South Africa
now has 11 official
languages, so I expect medications to ship with
documentation in all 11 of
them. Products sold in Canada probably require by
law documentation in at
least French and English (I'm sure someone on the
group will correct me if
I'm wrong).
2. A single-language document with a warnings section that
contains a set of
warnings in 20 or more languages. For example, the manual
would be entirely
in English or French, but the preface or first chapter
would contain a
section that lists the same laser (or other) warnings in
every language the
field engineer installing the product may speak.
Typically, I've seen this
approach in telecommunications equipment (not
end-user equipment, but
equipment sold to service providers to integrate into
their networks).
If anyone has anything to add to this, or other
examples, please discuss on
the list. I doubt we'll get to this item this
week (since it's on the bottom
of this week's agenda), but hopefully we'll
discuss this next week.
Best Regards,
Gershon
---
Gershon L
Joseph
Member, OASIS DITA and DocBook Technical Committees
Director of
Technology and Single Sourcing
Tech-Tav Documentation Ltd.
office:
+972-8-974-1569
mobile:
+972-57-314-1170
http://www.tech-tav.com
