Notes on Multilingual

multilingual.md

Multilingual and Inclusive Design

• Localization

  • Translation
  • Encoding, especially of non-Latin character sets
  • Text direction

• Challenges and complexities

  • Mixing Languages
    • "dir" and "lang" are global attributes - they can be used on any markup
  • Level of support in systems for all language features (example - half space in Farsi)

• Design considerations

  • Average word length differs between languages
  • Designs should be amenable to reversal for RTL reading

• Implementation considerations

  • Direction-specific CSS selectors
    • Example: https://github.com/waharnum/uio-multilingual/blob/master/demos/src/css/PrefsEditor-RTL.css#L5
  • Language-specific CSS selectors
    • Example: https://github.com/waharnum/uio-multilingual/blob/master/demos/src/css/PrefsEditor-LanguageSpecific.css#L2
  • String externalization
    • Example: https://github.com/waharnum/uio-multilingual/tree/master/demos/src/messages
  • RTL style sheets and CSS
    • Some styles will "parallel" when reversing, but others (such as margin / padding) will not
      • Automated approaches to doing this reversal include:
        • https://github.com/twitter/css-flip
        • https://github.com/MohammadYounes/rtlcss

Links

• UIO Multilingual Experiment: https://github.com/waharnum/uio-multilingual
• "Building RTL-Aware Web Apps & Websites"
  • Part 1: https://hacks.mozilla.org/2015/09/building-rtl-aware-web-apps-and-websites-part-1/
  • Part 2: https://hacks.mozilla.org/2015/10/building-rtl-aware-web-apps-websites-part-2/
• "Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Language": http://garbled.benhamill.com/2017/04/18/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-language/