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→Multilingual Sites and Translation Management in Drupal
Anas outlined a key hurdle in handling translations online. Currently there are only two main ways of creating a multilingual website. The first involves hiring someone to create multiple versions of the same website in different languages which is what is done for corporate websites. The second method involves utilizing a translation tool to automatically translate the website. Each of these methods has their own advantages and disadvantages. In the case of the first method, it is more costly both in time, effort and money, depending on whether or not someone was hired for the job or not. However the first approach provides a highly accurate translation of the website. The second method, because it is automated tends to be cheaper and faster, however its translation accuracy generally ranges from poor to just barely adequate. What Anas proposed was system that combines the two methods of translation. An automated system would carry out the initial translation of a webpage while a human user would correct any mistakes made by the automated translator. Doing so would take advantage of the strength’s of the two methods while mitigating their faults.
The second half of his presentation dealt with how Drupal handles the automated translation of pages and I had to admit that most of what he talked about went over my head. The only thing I understood was that Drupal’s translator, in the process of translating a website, breaks the website down into two different components and assigns each section into a separate domain. The first one, L10N deals with the websites localization information and deals mainly with (I think) how the content and characters are presented on screen. For instance Japanese text is read from right to left rather than left to right as you would in English and most Indo-European languages. Taking care of that language based layout of the text would be one of the responsibilities of the L10N domain. The second domain, I18n handles translating the actual content itself. He did mention that Drupal currently doesn’t support translating the strings in a website though I wasn’t sure what he meant by this. If domain I18n is already translating the websites content, then wouldn’t it already be translating the strings as well?
My impression of Anas’ view of open source is that it can be used to develop the tools necessary to make the internet truly global and by truly global I don’t just mean that everyone has access to it but has access to the content and information from people’s websites from around the world. The language gap is one of the elements that still restrict people’s access to information in the web, by creating a tool that can quickly, cheaply and accurately translate the websites of people around the world, that barrier can be greatly weakened if not removed altogether.
== General Impression ==
The presentations ended were quite well done and were overall easy to grasp and understand though they did end up getting too overly technical at some points however and as a result their messages what they were saying ended up going over my head. As to how my impressions of open source has changed after going to FSOSS it’s hard to say, I know that there is quite a bit of open source projects out there but I’ve often held the impression that the vast majority of those projects consisted of small scale stand alone projects that people implemented in their free time either as an academic exercise or just for the sheer fun of coding an application; with only a small minority of large complex projects out there. FSOSS was an eye opener in that I realize that there are far more large complex projects out there and that these projects are highly ambitious in what they hope to accomplish. Anas’ Drupal translator itself would lift a great deal of the restrictions on what content one can view on the internet by providing a means to read and understand sites written in languages that the reader is unfamiliar with, while Jordan, Anthony and Jon’s presentation on ARM based server farms provides the know how that would enable just about anyone to setup their own server farm without having to spend tens of thousands of dollars on both the actual hardware and on maintaining it.
== Conclusion ==
I have to admit, I did end up attending the FSOSS event somewhat begrudgingly. I had gone into study week with far more than enough work to keep me occupied and the prospect of having to spend the next few hours attending an event rather than finishing up my work or more preferably catching up on some much needed sleep wasn’t something that I wasn’t to crazy with. In retrospect though I am glad that I went, that event opened up a new level of understanding of what kinds of open source projects are out there that I can, hopefully someday, participate in once I get a bit more time on my hands. Here’s looking forward to FSOSS 2012, hopefully I won’t be so swamped with work that I can participate on all three days.
