San José, CA – September, 2004 Localizing with XLIFF and ICU Markus Scherer Raghuram (Ram) Viswanadha IBM San José Globalization Center of Competency Copyright © IBM Corporation

Localizing with XLIFF and ICU San José, CA- – September, th Internationalization & Unicode Conference Agenda What is software globalization? Localizable content storage formats Problems faced by translators What is XLIFF? XLIFF Benefits Integration of XLIFF in localization process ICU and XLIFF Localization process demo Q & A

Localizing with XLIFF and ICU San José, CA- – September, th Internationalization & Unicode Conference Globalization of a Software Product Localization (L10N): The process of modifying products or services to account for differences in distinct markets. Internationalization (I18N) : The process of ensuring at a technical/design level that a product can be easily localized. Globalization (G11N): The proper design and execution of systems, software, services, and procedures so that one instance of software, executing on a single server or end user machine, can process multilingual data, and present data culturally correctly in a multicultural environment such as the Internet.

Localizing with XLIFF and ICU San José, CA- – September, th Internationalization & Unicode Conference Localizable Content Storage Formats Plethora of formats –VC++.rc and.mc files –Java resource bundles –ICU resource bundles –.NET resource files –POSIX Message Catalogs –GNU gettext -.. etc. Note: Refer to the conference proceedings for more information

Localizing with XLIFF and ICU San José, CA- – September, th Internationalization & Unicode Conference Problems for Translators Large number of proprietary formats –Very different capabilities Lack of tools which understand the different formats and interoperate Formats in programming languages Lack of a well defined process for managing the localization work flow

Localizing with XLIFF and ICU San José, CA- – September, th Internationalization & Unicode Conference What is ICU? Internationalization libraries for C, C++, Java* –Open source – non-viral –Sponsored by IBM *Sun’s Java licenses an earlier ICU version; ICU4J updates it. Unicode standard compliant –full supplementary support Cross-platform; extensible and customizable High performance and thread-safe –Multiple locales in same thread – simultaneously

Localizing with XLIFF and ICU San José, CA- – September, th Internationalization & Unicode Conference ICU Services Unicode string handling, sets of Unicode characters, and character properties Character conversion (>200 conversion tables) Language-sensitive collation (UCA) and text searching Unicode regular expressions and text boundary analysis Locale-sensitive formatting and parsing (>200 locales) Timezone and currency handling Complex text layout Script transliteration and flexible text-text transformations Resource bundles for storing localizable content

Localizing with XLIFF and ICU San José, CA- – September, th Internationalization & Unicode Conference ICU ResourceBundle Features Comparable features for content storage except for meta data Support for some XLIFF meta data features Key-Value pairs + Nested Structures External text and binary files can be imported Bundle fallback mechanism – root bundle ‘fr’ bundle French ‘fr_CA’ bundle for French, Canada Alias mechanism for conserving space

Localizing with XLIFF and ICU San José, CA- – September, th Internationalization & Unicode Conference What is XLIFF? XML Localization Interchange File Format (XLIFF) is an emerging industry standard for exchanging content for localization. Defines XML vocabulary for expressing localizable data. Designed by localization industry experts to address the problems faced by translators.

Localizing with XLIFF and ICU San José, CA- – September, th Internationalization & Unicode Conference XLIFF Benefits XML-based –Problems of encoding and character sets avoided –Rich internationalization features Superset of other formats –Lossless conversion to and from different formats –Binary objects (e.g. icons) can be imported or represented inline Not proprietary –Tool and vendor neutral Key-value pairs + Nested structures Extensible

Localizing with XLIFF and ICU San José, CA- – September, th Internationalization & Unicode Conference XLIFF Benefits (contd.) Translation can be turned off. Meta data for communication between developer and translator. Validation through XML Schema or Data Type Definition (DTD). Support for Translation Memory, Machine Translation (MT) and Computer Aided Translation. Meta data for administrative info and version management.

Localizing with XLIFF and ICU San José, CA- – September, th Internationalization & Unicode Conference XLIFF Snippet A child of five could understand this! Fetch me a child of five. ఒక ఐదు యెళ్ళ పిల్లవాడు దీనిని అర్థం చేసుకొగలడు, ఐదు యెళ్ళ పిల్లవాడిని తీసుకు రండి

Localizing with XLIFF and ICU San José, CA- – September, th Internationalization & Unicode Conference How Applications Localize Repository Template Tools that understandmultiple formats Product Developers Translators Localized files

Localizing with XLIFF and ICU San José, CA- – September, th Internationalization & Unicode Conference Using XLIFF XLIFF is used only for interchange of content with translators. XLIFF is used as the source format of localizable content.

Localizing with XLIFF and ICU San José, CA- – September, th Internationalization & Unicode Conference Transient XLIFF Files Product Developers Repository Translators Localized XLIFF Files Template XLIFF Filter Template XLIFF File

Localizing with XLIFF and ICU San José, CA- – September, th Internationalization & Unicode Conference Source XLIFF Files Product Developers Repository Localized XLIFF Files Template XLIFF Filter inbuild process Template XLIFF File Translators

Localizing with XLIFF and ICU San José, CA- – September, th Internationalization & Unicode Conference XLIFF for Localization Engineers Q. What does XLIFF do for me? Single format for quality control NO errors due to 3 rd party tools: you control the converters NO data interchange errors Control what needs to be translated Communicate with translator

Localizing with XLIFF and ICU San José, CA- – September, th Internationalization & Unicode Conference Localization with XLIFF and ICU Product Developers Repository Localized XLIFF Files Template in ICU format XLIFF2ICUConverterand genrb Filters inbuild process Template XLIFF File Translators

Localizing with XLIFF and ICU San José, CA- – September, th Internationalization & Unicode Conference Lets Localize! s/ufortune

Localizing with XLIFF and ICU San José, CA- – September, th Internationalization & Unicode Conference Conclusion XLIFF is the best interchange format available ICU provides tools for using XLIFF in the localization process

Localizing with XLIFF and ICU San José, CA- – September, th Internationalization & Unicode Conference References and Resources International Components for Unicode (ICU) : XLIFF Specification: htm htm XLIFF Overview: White Paper on XLIFF: whitepaper_1.1-cs.pdf whitepaper_1.1-cs.pdf Domino Global Workbench Version 6: XLIFF at IBM: XLIFF at Sun:

Localizing with XLIFF and ICU San José, CA- – September, th Internationalization & Unicode Conference Questions Thank you for listening. Are there any questions?