making meaning in a multilingual world
TRANSCRIPT
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Making meaning in a multilingual
worldTristan Roddis, Cogapp
MCN Minneapolis, November 2015@tristan_roddis [email protected]
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Why bother?Worldwide USA
Lots more information in 2013 census data!
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•Unicode!
OK, I’m convinced. How?
'THUMBS UP SIGN' (U+1F44D)'OK HAND SIGN' (U+1F44C)
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Backend systems
•TMS now fully multilingual•Multi Mimsy XG is too
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Make sure you understand it
•e.g. The Absolute Minimum Every Software Developer Absolutely, Positively Must Know About Unicode and Character Sets (No Excuses!) by Joel Spolsky
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Make sure processing
systems handle it too
•e.g. Python 2 versus Python 3•Create a Unicode “sandwich”
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What about a CMS?
•Drupal•Excellent multilingual support•Editing interface also translated•Even better in Drupal 8
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Things to consider
•Fallback language•Translation of categories and
taxonomies•URL translation
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Translation workflow
•Drupal: Translation Management Tool
•Third-party services, e.g. Lingotek•Transiflex - free for Open Source
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Right-to-left text
•<html dir=“rtl”>•‏
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Mixed directions
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CSS
•Use a pre-processor!•e.g. SASS, LESS
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CSS
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Arabic numbers•Western Arabic versus
Eastern Arabic numerals•N.b. read left-to-right!
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Images
•Avoid text in images•Reverse image ordering
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Exception: useful to control layout
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Beware web fonts
•Unsupported characters, especially for mixed language
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Beware web fonts
•Even transliteration can cause problems
•E.g. → •See this article on diacritics
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Beware fonts
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Beware fonts
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Beware fonts
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So what do you get?
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