making meaning in a multilingual world

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Making meaning in a multilingual world Tristan Roddis, Cogapp MCN Minneapolis, November 2015 @tristan_roddis [email protected]

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Page 1: Making Meaning in a Multilingual World

Making meaning in a multilingual

worldTristan Roddis, Cogapp

MCN Minneapolis, November 2015@tristan_roddis [email protected]

Page 2: Making Meaning in a Multilingual World

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”>•&rlm;

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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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Questions?

[email protected]•@tristan_roddis