The concept of content management is predicated of the fact that an application can separate a formatted document from its textual content. This relieves the individuals responsible for the creation and maintenance of textual content from the complexities of the format. The format can be HTML, RTF or word document format and it is handled by a separate group known as the Web developers. The Web developers are responsible for the technical details of displaying the content with format such as font, positioning, colors and graphics. Content management can be separated into two scopes:
- Single base language content management
- Multilingual content management
- Internationalization (I18N)
Base language content management tools exist to manage the entire code and content base. Most of the multilingual content management tools focus on just the management of the multilingual content.
The major difference between the base language content management systems (BLCMS) and the Multilingual systems is BLCMS manage both the code and the content whereas the multilingual systems manage the multiple content and the process of getting the content reviewed, approved and deployed to web sites.
Multilingual Content Management
There are 3 levels at which content management can be considered - Global, International and Local. The definition of each is:
- Globalization (G11N) - process for site development including the concept of workflow have been engineered to provide a robust framework for cost-effective multilingual site development and maintenance incorporating overseas offices and consulting.
- Internationalization (I18N) - web site content and look and feel are developed to simplify multilingual and multicultural localization - graphics, placement of text, development of paragraphs, hyperlink special text etc.
- Localization (L10N) - web site content and look and feel are adjusted to meet a particular audiences.
Internationalization –I18N
It is the process of making software flexible enough to run correctly in any local machine.
The tasks of I18N are:
- Read/Write to manipulate local text. Java works with Unicode internally and must be able to read and write to local format.
- Local custom date/time formatting and sorting strings.
- User visible text in local language. Components need to be able to have text in other languages. For example can chart titles and bar columns be given names in other languages. This means that the methods associated with the components class must be able to set the encoding.
- Currently, to interact in a particular language the user must equip the computer with an operating system version that supports that language. For example, if running Win NT, and Arabic support is desired then an Arabic version of WinNT is required.
Java (including 2.0) needs an OS-independent mechanism for national language support.
Localization and Translation
Localization consists of both language and cultural translations - making sure that the images, logos, expressions and metaphors used on your Web site are appropriate to the cultures it caters to.
For sites that are changing rapidly, automatic translation within the translation stream is mandatory to reduce costs. There is a tradeoff between automatic and manual translation - quality and cost.
- Cost: Translators typically charges between 10-50 cents per word depending on the language, with an average of 28 cents per word.
- Accuracy of Machine Translation: About 60% accurate because machines can’t understand the context.
