Re: Formatting of Simplified Chinese & Traditional Chinese

[Sean Wheller <swheller -at- bigpond -dot- net -dot- au>]

On Tuesday 21 January 2003 09:13 pm, Broberg, Mats wrote:
> Dear listmembers,
>
> How do you deal with "bold", "italic" and other ways of emphasis when
> localizing manuals to Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese? I
> understand that "bold" and "italic" as methods of typographically
> emphasizing something don't exist in Chinese typography, although some CJK
> typefaces nowadays seem to feature these varieties. I would be interested
> in hearing your views about handling typographical emphasis in CJK.
>
> Also, if there is someone out there who localize their manuals into a large
> number of different scripts systems (Latin, Cyrillic, Arabic, CJK etc), I
> would be interested to exchange a few e-mails about Unicode & typeface
> issues.
>
> Best regards,
> Mats Broberg
> FLIR Systems AB
> Sweden

Hello Matt,

I am using XML to develop documentation, so formatting is under the control of 
XSL stylesheets. Quite frankly I think I am happy not to have to worry about 
the formatting. May I suggest you take the same path.

When authoring with xml you are by default required to specify the document 
encoding in the xml prolog. It looks like this: 
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

The good thing about this is that for i18n, translators need only change the 
encoding value to the type required for the character set. Most XML Editors 
will then automatically detect the encoding type and save the document in 
that encoding, accordingly.

In the case of Chinese use encoding="gb2312" or encoding="Big5"

For other languages the same applies, simply exchange the encoding value with 
the IANA or MIME name as required and save. Now you can start typing in that 
character set. It helps if you have a keyboard that shows you which keys are 
what. I have an English/Hebrew Keyboard. I don't know what you will need for 
Chinese, but most OS's have a virtual keyboard that will enable you to test 
it before investing in another keyboard. In the case of languages that read 
from right to left you also need your editor to support this. Most tools have 
an add-on for BiDi.

To get more information, a good place to start will be i18n.com 
(http://www.i18n.com). From there, assuming you may want to go the XML and 
Java route (recommended), I suggest looking at W3C.org (http://www.w3c.org), 
naturally the XML and Internationalization sections. Then take a tour to Sun 
Microsystems Java (http://java.sun.com).

Most of the XML tools are Java based which is just great for cross-platform 
information development. There is also a very strong synergy between XML and 
Java, so it makes sense to use a Java based app for editing.

On the whole I think it best to invest in a translation memory application. If 
you are working with a good translation house, then they will more than 
likely have this already. In most cases this is the cheapest route with the 
best quality. If you are using the XML/Java route you will find certain cost 
reductions builtin to the XML Authoring system and also for i18n.

If you need any further help, just let me know.

-- 
Sean Wheller
swheller -at- bigpond -dot- net -dot- au
XWriter



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