making meaning in a multilingual world
Post on 23-Feb-2017
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Making meaning in a multilingual
worldTristan Roddis, Cogapp
MCN Minneapolis, November 2015@tristan_roddis tristanr@cogapp.com
Why bother?Worldwide USA
Lots more information in 2013 census data!
•Unicode!
OK, I’m convinced. How?
'THUMBS UP SIGN' (U+1F44D)'OK HAND SIGN' (U+1F44C)
Backend systems
•TMS now fully multilingual•Multi Mimsy XG is too
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
Make sure processing
systems handle it too
•e.g. Python 2 versus Python 3•Create a Unicode “sandwich”
What about a CMS?
•Drupal•Excellent multilingual support•Editing interface also translated•Even better in Drupal 8
Things to consider
•Fallback language•Translation of categories and
taxonomies•URL translation
Translation workflow
•Drupal: Translation Management Tool
•Third-party services, e.g. Lingotek•Transiflex - free for Open Source
Right-to-left text
•<html dir=“rtl”>•‏
Mixed directions
CSS
•Use a pre-processor!•e.g. SASS, LESS
CSS
Arabic numbers•Western Arabic versus
Eastern Arabic numerals•N.b. read left-to-right!
Images
•Avoid text in images•Reverse image ordering
Exception: useful to control layout
Beware web fonts
•Unsupported characters, especially for mixed language
Beware web fonts
•Even transliteration can cause problems
•E.g. → •See this article on diacritics
Beware fonts
Beware fonts
Beware fonts
So what do you get?
Questions?
•tristanr@cogapp.com•@tristan_roddis
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