Many years ago, Microsoft decided to make available the software glossaries for all their products in MSDN and as a free download. This was shocking at first, as it was lot of IP and potentially, trade secrets.

But the reasoning behind was clear, if Microsoft wanted to be “the platform” globally they had to open up to the entire ecosystem also globally. Steve Ballmer made it very clear that it was not about users, but developers. And Developers, and by extension, localizers, need to have useful and full access to the platform information to build a true ecosystem.

We developed ApSIC Xbench, a free download, with a view to provide a convenient access to bilingual information, and that included support for the Microsoft Software Glossaries in its .csv form.

Late last year, Microsoft decided to pull out the software glossaries and replace it by a Master Glossary. The announcement mentioned that former software glossaries would continue to be available to MSDN subscribers. But it did not mean that they are available. We at ApSIC are subscribers of MSDN Universal Edition and the latest software glossaries are as of July 2006. This means: no Vista glossaries, no Office 2007 glossaries, no Exchange 2007 glossaries.

I think that with decision is moving away from the role of being the platform. It is simply more difficult and expensive for Microsoft hardware and software partners to integrate globally and seamlessly with the platform.

Hey, what about the master glossary? IMHO, a master glossary helps you to translate something that ’smells’ like the platform, but professional translation requires access to the exact strings in any relevant product to provide international users with a true high quality experience.

And there is a fundamental problem with a master glossary: there is no single market force to push to make it right. No end user wants a master glossary. End users want software that they can understand well. The software strings should become the master glossary, because localized software “wants” to be clear and accurate if it has to sell well. Actually, I would symptom it as a big problem if software glossaries cannot become the real master glossary after the product has shipped.

At least now we have Mac OS X glossaries (which we now support in ApSIC Xbench 2.7), which seems to follow as a publicly extensive available reference.

I don’t discard that Microsoft sees publishing software glossaries as a security threat (hence the title of this post). I hope they reconsider the value they bring to the entire ecosystem by continuing to be a platform and that we see the glossaries available publicly again in the future.

We are a Singapore software internationalization and localization provider with one of the branches in China. Currently we need the Trados training to our staff. However, we searched the webs but couldn’t find such training courses locally..

-Stefan
ESS Software (www.essware.com)

I just learnt about a relatively new feature of Google: the ability to define your own search engine. After some tries in our own website, I found it was interesting for limiting searches to some content we planned to add (namely our tools documentation) but the requirement to add advertisements was a turn-off. I definitively do not want random ads in our website.

I looked into the Custom Search Engine settings and then I saw that non-profits are allowed to have no advertisements. Then suddenly an idea came thru. How about if there was a search engine whose search results included only content in the websites of GALA members?

It turned out that implementing it was simpler than I though, and here is the result:

The custom search engine could be added somewhere in the GALA website (and maintained as new members join GALA). Please note that the search engine in this blog post only lists websites for members as of the time of this writing.

I hope you like the idea of a GALA syndicated search.

The Last Call Working Draft of the Internationalization Tag Set has been published.

Along with it a new document the Best Practices for XML Internationalization has also been published as a First Working Draft.

I would encourage anyone who develop translation tools that provide support for XML to review the ITS Specification document. Part of the specification addresses some of the XML localizability issues, offering a common way to specify localization information:

• what should or should not be translated,
• some terminology identification mechanism,
• identification of inline codes and sub-flows,
• localization notes,
• and more…

You can use Bugzilla to point out issues and provide comments. The review period lasts until June-30 (6 weeks).

Nowadays, VMware has become an essential tool for ApSIC’s localization and internationalization testing team, effectively phasing out the former arrangements based on disk images.

So now it’s good news that the entry product for VWware server-grade line-up, VMware Server, will be available for free to entice businesses to start deploying server virtualization, with a view that they get some conversions to their currently pricey high-end server virtualization solutions.

I first learn about VMware, back in 1999 when I read a press release about a start-up that had released a product which would allow running Linux and Windows virtual machines on a Linux or Windows host operating system.

At that time we were frequently dual booting Windows NT Workstation and OS/2, so I wrote them to ask if they were planning to add OS/2 as either a guest or a host operating system, and they replied almost instantly saying that due to certain technical particularities, support for OS/2 was not feasible. (Fortunatelly, weeks later we deployed a solution to avoid frequent dual booting with a combination of Windows NT Terminal Server 4.0 and OS/2 client machines.)

We forgot about VMware for a while, and the main driver to revisit VMware in our testing process was a couple years ago, because when we expanded the testing lab with newer machines the only way to test Windows NT was on a virtual machine, due to the lack of drivers for new machines.

Ironically, lack of NT support for newer hardware was a good show-stopper to run into, because VMware has since become instrumental in our testing efforts!

From time to time I google for new tools, ideas, and news on the localization business. When I work remotely, I normally VPN and use Remote Desktop from several diferent desktops to the office. I tend to avoid carrying a laptop if I can. However, I always surf from the remote machine because the surfing experience locally is much better than with Remote Desktop.

One issue that I have with this research surfing, is that I tend to lose some of the interesting links I find because I don’t have a stable Favorites place anywhere, which means that I have to rely on my own memory to google it afterwards (most common method, but getting less and less reliable as we speak) or I send myself a reminder mail, but it has to be something really important to make go through all the hassle of sending a mail to myself.

Well, one Web-based tool has just come to rescue: LookLater. It is very new, just a few days old indeed, and it has a quite neat and simple interface a la Google. It’s very easy and lightweight to install (for example, in Firefox, you only have to drop a link to the link bar and you are all set in one second). I wouldn’t be surprised if the big guys eventually launched versions of this cool idea linked with their ad services.

I find Looklater also especially useful for translators. Translation in general and technical translation in particular are extremely knowledge-intensive, much more that most people seem to believe. After all, nobody can translate what he o she does not know what it is (that applies also to machine translation), and that means that the professional translator must often do an intensive background research work to get it right.

I think that translators can use this type of tool to quickly bookmark links, pages, and snippets, when they are looking for information or bilingual corpuses on the subject matter of their current job, and after the research, just do a quick recap on the saved links to qualify and organize them.

ITS (http://www.w3.org/TR/its/) is a set of elements and attributes that supports the internationalization and localization of schemas and XML documents. This first draft addresses the following type of information (called data categories in the document):

• translatibility
• localization information
• terminology
• directionality
• and Ruby text

For example, ITS provides attributes to identify within your XML document parts that should not be translated, or words/phrases that should be treated as “terms”, as shown below:

<para>
And he said:
You need a new <span its:translate='no'
its:term='yes'>motherboard</span>.
</para>

Each data category can be used in schemas, in-situ (within the content), or dislocated (defined somewhere else than where the corresponding content is located). XPath is used to provide all the scoping mechanism.

I think it is important for the localization and translation tools vendors who are not part of the ITS working group to provide feedback on this draft, so the final version of ITS can be well-suited for their applications. You can send your comments to www-i18n-comments@w3.org. Use Comment on its tagset WD in the subject line of your email. The comments archives are publicly available.

Sometimes I feel that I am losing my sense of direction in that proliferating thicket of technologies, programs, workflows, releases, processes, updates, tools, routines, patches, exceptions, fixes, and if none of these work - workarounds.

Usually I come down with something, then: a mild bout of toolitis, or a little fixema - nothing serious, really.

Time for recovery is also time for reflection and recollection:

There really was that charming turn-of-the-century “challenge to the world community to bridge language barriers by developing technologies with real-time digital translation so anyone on the planet can talk to anyone else” (albeit by a presidential candidate).

And Arthur C. Clarke (of ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ fame) really did set the ultimate benchmark almost half a century ago:

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

I haven’t quite regained my sense of direction, but at least some of my immoderate sense of proportion.

Anybody else with a thirst for magic?

I’m not a blogger (as I said at the panel discussion) but I’m going to blog the way I think you’re supposed to… write what you feel like when you feel like it.
I just heard about an opensource tool that lets you share your mouse and keyboard over TCPIP….and it’s platform independent. So you can have a mac, a pc, and a linux box each with a monitor attached, but only one mouse and one keyboard interfacing with all 3 (and I’ve heard it shares the clipboard, so you can cut and paste between screens/computers). Haven’t used it yet, but a friend of mine says it’s great. http://synergy2.sourceforge.net/index.html. I’m always dealing with cross platform issues, and this should be time saver.

My name is Josep Condal, and I am the Managing Director at ApSIC. I currently serve as GALA’s Head of the Technology Committee.

My professional background is both in software development and localization, so no wonder why my Holy Grail is to reach new levels of quality and performance driven by technology and, where the technology does not reach yet, processes.

My main interests on technology revolve around tools that directly or indirectly enforce streamlined operations. Streamlined operations mean happy clients, happy vendors, and happy CFOs. A number of tool publishers in our business have gradually evolved to serve their clients (the ones in an organization who have a purchase decision), forgetting a little bit (and sometimes a lot!) who the actual users downstream are. This attitude is obviously understandable and respectable, but leaves plenty of opportunity for great improvements that really can change things. We hope that this blog space can contribute to open new paths of communications among those who use the tools and those who make them.

The Trados acquisition by SDL was really eye-popping for many and the apparent aftermath is that it has set a new ground for opportunity and innovation both inside and overall outside SDL’s walls. I anticipate many important changes technology-wise over the next 5 years, and we hope that this GALA blog can become a good source of information and discussion for what’s here and what’s coming.

Sorry for this long post! I just would like to add a couple more lines to thank Tony O’Dowd for volunteering to be the host and moderator of this blog initiative, Aki Ito for his determination on making sure that things happen at GALA, and to Laura Brandon for turning an idea from a brainstorming exercise into something that we can touch and feel. I would also like to thank in advance all the contributions that the bloggers of this space will be making to help define the role and shape of technology in the GILT business.