Tony Jewtushenko Principal Product Manager Applications Development Tools Oracle Corporation

XLIFF at Oracle Application Localisation and XLIFF

Agenda  A Brief Look at XLIFF  XLIFF and Oracle’s internal localisation process  Localisation Tools Overview  Oracle’s Localisation Tools Strategy

A Brief Look at XLIFF  X ML L ocalisation I nterchange F ile F ormat: – A specification for the lossless interchange of localizable data and its related information, which is tool-neutral, has been formalized as an XML vocabulary,and features an extensibility mechanism.  An emerging OASIS standard.  Homepage:  Contributors: Alchemy Software, Bowne Global Solutions, Convey Software, Ektron, Globalsight, HP, Lotus/IBM, Lionbridge, LRC, Moravia IT, Novell, Oracle, Microsoft, RWS Group, SAP, SDL International, Sun Microsystems, Tektronix

A Brief Look at XLIFF  Spec Versions: – 1.0 Committee Specification – April 2002 – 1.1 Committee Specification – May 2003  Completed Public Review Oct 2003  Shortly to be submitted for review as formal OASIS standard  Commercial 3 rd Party Tools Support – XLIFF Aware: Alchemy Catalyst 5.0 (Visual Editor), Bowne Global Solutions Elcano, Heartsome XLIFF editor, IBM Domino Global Workbench 6, XML-Intl – XLIFF Enabled: Passolo (with special configuration), – Trados with modified INI file – XLIFF Future Support Announced: SDL SDLX, Apple AppleGlot

Who Localises Oracle Applications?  Oracle’s Internal Users – Applications Product Translation team:  e-business Suite Applications  on demand patch sets  Oracle’s End Users – Custom application developers:  Oracle Forms  Oracle Reports  Oracle JDeveloper

A closer look at…  Oracle’s Internal Users – Applications Product Translation team:  e-business Suite Applications  On-demand patch sets

Oracle e-business Suite Localisation Challenges:  e-business Suite Applications: – CRM, Financials, HR, Marketing, Supply Chain Management, Contracts, Supplier, Planning, Fulfillment, Projects, Procurement, Public Sector  On-demand patch sets – Automated patch process initiated by customer support ticket – Web based patch distribution  Constraints: – 4M wordcount software strings – 30 language simultaneous releases – 13K localizable files – Localisation group in Dublin – 5,000 world-wide distributed development team

Oracle e-business Suite Localisation Process Objectives:  24 – 7, 100% automated process – no exceptions  Translation in parallel with development  Translation begins at code check-in  Translation “on-demand” – no more “big project” model

“Translation Factory” Workflow Leverage Translation Repository Workflow Manager Developer Code Check in Source Control FTP Vendor / PM HyperHub XLIFF Translation Kit Repository contains string pairs for all languages TF Workflow consists of 3 functions: 1.Leverage file from repository 2.Create translation kit 3.Merge translated kit into repository OraXLIFF Oracle Forms Oracle Reports Seedata 100% Translated XLIFF Translation Kit Merge XLIFF Translation Kit Requires Translation Generate XLIFF Translation Kit

Oracle e-business Suite “Translation Factory” Metrics  Current through-put – 100,000 language checkins per month – 2 million files per month – 98% of words leverage – Average time to process a file: 45 seconds – Fully scalable “add a box model”  Business Benefits – Sim ship of all 30 languages – International version testing before US release – Reduced support costs – Number of release engineers reduced from 20 to 2 resulting in $ 1 million saving per year – ROI positive within 1 year

How does XLIFF fit into TF?  OraXLIFF files submitted directly to TF – “OraXLIFF” checked-in by developer – “OraXLIFF” is Oracle’s XLIFF implemenation  Pure XLIFF 1.0 (but more narrowly defined vocabulary)  Spec developed with development groups and published  Custom resources handled by “prop-group” / “prop” extensions – 1-2% of content in OraXLIFF  OraXLIFF Translation Kit archives – Generated by TF, downloaded by vendors, editable by HyperHub only  New resource formats encouraged to use OraXLIFF format  Some legacy formats may be modified to save directly to OraXLIFF at authoring point, others may develop converters

HyperHub and OraXLIFF HyperHub is Oracle ’ s internal translation tool Data is imported from OraXLIFF Translation Kits Only HH can modify OraXLIFF Translation Kits

HyperHub and OraXLIFF Fuzzy Match suggestions – using XLIFF ’ s “ alt-trans ” constructs

XLIFF benefit to TF  With fewer formats to support, 24-7 automation breaks less frequently  Fewer files rejected due to invalid data or format.  Unexpected changes to resource formats don’t delay translation  New resource formats can be processed by TF without retooling  Built in support for advanced features such as “alt- trans” fuzzy matches and enhanced meta-data  All the advantages of XML (i.e., XST, data validation, XSL-FO etc.)

Implementation Considerations  Focus on canonical representation of proprietary resources in XLIFF – Survey as many resource formats as possible – Specify canonical rules for:  Structural / hierarchical representation  ID generation for leveraging  Mapping to repository data  Representation of GUI elements  Metadata for workflow  GIGO…  Research established best practices – Decide on implementation architecture: Skeleton file v. Transformation – Open source tools – 3 rd Party Localisation Tools implementation specifications

And now a closer look at…  Oracle’s End Users – Custom application developers:  Oracle Forms  Oracle Reports  Oracle JDeveloper

Current Localisation Support for Oracle Apps Developers  TranslationHub is a productised version of HyperHub – Released as a subcomponent of Oracle Forms and Reports, within Oracle IDS distribution – Simplified subset of HyperHub functionality – Enhanced User Interface – Presently supports only Forms and Reports – XLIFF not supported at this time

TranslationHub Navigator Preview Output Attributes Terminology

Current Localisation Support for Oracle Apps Developers  TransX Utility: – XML based utility that supports translation of Seedata and Messages  Prepares strings for translation  Loads translated strings into database  Specifically optimised to transform easily into XLIFF – Released within Oracle9i XML Developer's Kits Download from

Localisation Support Strategy for Oracle Apps Developers  Short Term – Minor feature enhancements and bug fixes to TranslationHub – May add XLIFF support to TranslationHub – Publish Oracle XLIFF implementation guide – Provide means of converting between Forms or Reports formats and XLIFF.  Medium Term – IDE’s to export localisable resources to XLIFF 1.1 and import the translated files supporting:  Oracle Forms  Oracle Reports  JDeveloper generated applications – Publish Oracle XLIFF 1.1 implementation guide for 3 rd party tools vendors and applications developers. – Provide migration path for TranslationHub users to XLIFF 1.1

Advantages to Oracle End User Applications Developers:  Productivity with Choice: – 3 rd party best-of-breed computer aided translation tools reduce translation costs and development time – Applications developers can use their established proprietary localisation processes and tools to localise their Oracle applications.  Open standards improve ability to: – Develop custom localisation solutions – Integrate localisation data into workflow automation – Enhance project metadata for better tracking and control.

Contact Information Contact Tony at for more information regarding Oracle’s applications development and localisation tools.

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