DITA Translation Subcommittee -- Agenda 20 March 2007

DITA Translation Subcommittee Meeting 
Minutes: 20 
March 2007

 

1) Roll 
call

    Regrets: 
JoAnn Hackos

 

2) Accept Minutes 
from 12 March 2007

 

3)  Review open 
action items

 

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

          all 
the examples into the template for the TC OK

 

        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 
JoAnn will review the charter and draft a revision

 

        
COMPLETED     No revision required. Charter 
is fine as stated.

 

    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 . Review notes from Kara 
Warburton and Richard Ischida on Andrzej's acronym proposal. 

 

       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.

Note: Kara is out of the office this 
week.

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 Discuss Rodolfo's 
 proposed additions 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  Discussion of new issues to 
explore for the committee going forward.

 

 

 

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


 

 

 

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