DITA Translation Subcommittee Meeting Minutes -- 12 March 2007

DITA Translation Subcommittee Meeting 
Minutes: 12 March 2007

 

(Recorded by JoAnn Hackos)

 

The DITA Translation Subcommittee met on 
Monday, 12 March 2007 at 08:00am PT
for 60 
minutes.

 

1)  Roll Call

 

    
Present:
        JoAnn 
Hackos
        Robert 
Anderson
        Rodolfo 
Raya
        Don 
Day
        Andrzej 
Zydron
        Nick Rosenthal

 

    Regrets:

 

2)  Accept Minutes from 26 February 2007
    Accepted. 
[JoAnn moved, Rdolfo seconded, no 
objections]

 

3)  Review open action items

 

    3.1 ACTION: Gershon to 
investigate whether he can use a client's samples.

 

        
CONTINUED. (client is awaiting legal OK)

 

    3.2 ACTION: Gershon and Don will 
present the approved best practices 
on
        indexing and Translation Memory 
as committee drafts for approval by the 
DITA
        Technical 
Committee.

 

        ON HOLD 
(until DITA TC closes 1.1 spec)

 

    3.3 ACTION: Everyone to review 
the document JoAnn posted on 13 
November
        (subject: Document from 
Christian Lieske).

 

        COMPLETED

 

    3.4 ACTION: Don to raise 
glossary work item at the TC after the 1.1 draft 
to
        see if it needs its own 
subcommittee.

 

        ON HOLD 
(until DITA TC closes 1.1 spec)

 

    3.5 ACTION: JoAnn will 
revisit the charter and draft a revision.

 

    3.6 ACTION: Andrzej will draft a 
preliminary statement of the acronyms issues for the
 DITA 1.2 issues 
list.

 

        
CONTINUED

 

    3.7 Rodolfo will continue to work on 
the Best Practice for XLIFF

 

    CONTINUED

 

    3.8 Gershon will prepare the 
multilanguage and the other Best Practices in the OASIS 

    template for the TC 
approval.

 

4) Returning business:

 

    4.1 Approved the new draft of the Multi-language 
Best Practice (Nancy Harrison)

 

      Action completed to approve this Best Practice. Rodolfo 
moved, Nick seconded.

      Gershon to add examples 
and prepare the complete set for this TC approval. Include the 
Chinese

      examples which are not 
copyrighted. These are in the public domain. 

 

    4.2 Reviewed Andrzej's acronym proposal. Andrzej will revise

 

       Issue of acronym's for inflected language. Possible 
problem in typing the acronym. Consider 
too 

        much 
typing for authors. Consider problem of translated text in the 
attribute.

 

    Notes from Kara 
Warburton

Using the acronym itself as the id attribute is not a 
good idea since it may not be unique. Many acronyms have multiple different 
expanded forms, even within the same domain. For instance, in computing, ACL can 
stand for both access control list, and application connectivity link. When you 
are dealing with multiple domains, there are likely to be more than two expanded 
forms.

Also, how does this relate to the <term> 
element that already exists in DITA? An acronym is a type of term, so I would 
like to see these two items handled together somehow, such as through a "type" 
attribute on the <term> element, that attribute using one of the values in 
TBX-lite.

Notes from Richard 
Ischida

I just skimmed this, and thought I should point out a 
couple more things to consider. Note that acronyms also change in translation, 
eg. NATO becomes OTAN in Spanish. Another good reason to avoid using the acronym 
as the id.

Also, it would be useful to search the public w3c 
html mailing lists (going back a few years) for discussions about acronyms and 
abbreviations. Things you'll find there include discussions about whether it 
makes sense to separate out acronyms and abbreviations - ie. can people always 
decide which is which. And Web Accessibility requirements that lean towards a 
need for a pronunciation guide that is separate from the expanded form, eg. for 
clarifying that CSAIL (Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory) is pronounced see-sail, not 
C.S.A.I.L.

    4.3 Rodolfo 
proposed adding to the Indexing best 
practice. 

 

    
Need to account for languages with multiple character sets. Japanese should be 
sorted by the Hiragana

    alphabet, based on pronunciation, not the Unicode ID.

 

    Rodolfo noted that translators must type in the sort order in Hiragana. 
However, the translator might

    not always know the correct Hirgana pronunciation for the Kanji or 
Katekana characters.

 

     Human entry is important. You cannot achieve good results with 
automatic processes alone.

 

    
Andrzej -- noted other languages with similar problems for indexing. Serbian, 
Croatian, Adzerbajani, 

    Albanian, Mongolian, Georgian, Caucasian, perhaps 
others.

 

    The text must be sorted in multiple orders.

 

    JoAnn will try writing the addition to the indexing Best Practice for 
review.

    4.3 Review Christian Lieske's 
article on XML, DITA, and Translation 
requirements.
        
    4.4 Discussion of new issues to explore for 
the committee going forward.

 

--Meeting adjourned at 9:00--

 

JoAnn T. Hackos, PhD
President
Comtech Services, 
Inc.
710 Kipling 
Street, Suite 400
Denver CO 80215
303-232-7586