Multilingual Issues

1
Multilingual Issues

• Dr. Gino Cheng
• Media Arts Technology Center
• Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
• eegino_at_ust.hk, 2358-8540

2
Limited Penetration in Asia

• Three million users in Asia, 5 growth per month
• Content primarily in English
• Limited bandwidth
• Cultural gap

3
Barrier to Chinese Content

• Different character formats
• GB (6763 characters)
• Big5 (13,000 characters)
• Unicode (20,000 characters)
• Different fonts
• No standard input method
• Applications (e.g., search, e-mail) not designed
  for double-byte representation

4
Document Publishing

• HTML
• Limited formating capabilities
• Automated generation through scripts
• PDF
• Viewed within browser (Amber) or via helper
  (Acrobat Viewer)
• Plug-in
• Powerpoint, Word, etc.

5
Chinese WWW

• HTML,PDF, or Plug-in?
• HTML - simplest way to publish, information
  generated on the fly, most flexible
• PDF - rich representation, compatibility with
  print
• Plug-in - Microsoft Office environment,
  collaboration, editing is important

6
HTML Authoring

• Many tools exist
• Frontpage
• Pagemill
• Netobjects
• Character coding based upon windows environment
  (viewer needs similar environment)
• CGI scripts

7
PDF - portable document format

• What you view is what you print
• Supports formatting, and multiple fonts
• Hypertext documents
• Streaming page at a time viewing by browser

8
Publishing PDF

• Publishing path

Publishing Application (print to file)
Adobe Distiller
Postscript
PDF
9
Searchable PDF

• Web search engines
• Cascade, Verity, PLWeb, Open Text, Fulcrum,
  Excalibur
• ASCII mirror
• Searchable ASCII version of text in mirror
  directory structure
• Accessed through HTML form and CGI script

10
Plug-ins

• Program files accessible via WWW (FTP)
• View and edit from within WWW pages via plug-ins,
  active X
• Microsoft office (backoffice)
• Create unique mime types supported by helper
  applications
• Need consistent language environment

11
Creating a Multilingual Web Site

• Supporting several languages
• Pre-compiled
• On-the-fly
• Display / Input methods
• Search considerations
• Double-byte text
• Cross-language search

12
Multilingual Sites

• Pre-compiled - directory selected through CGI
  or Javascript

/WWW
/CH
/ENG
13
Multilingual Sites

• On-the-fly pages

If Lang English
English
If Lang Chinese
Chinese
HTML Page
14
Chinese Computing / Internet

• Chinese operating systems
• C-Win, P-Win
• Chinese environments
• Chinese Partner
• Chinese capable applications
• Netscape

15
Displaying Text in HTML

• Scripts to translate GB / Big5 to GIF images
• www.ocrat.com
• Use Netscape /IE4 built-in Unicode support
• www.toptown.com/hp/ppang/tips.html
• Twinbridges Asian Viewer (CJK)
• www.twinbridge.com

16
Input Methods

• Keyboard based input (pinyin, zhuyin, zhiran)
• Pen based input
• Voice commander
• Nothing (free) yet available for the WWW
• Twinbridges Asian Bridge
• Java

17
Multilingual Development Tools

• Accent (www.accent.com)
• Requires accent www browser
• Twinbridge
• Asian Bridge
• Asian Creation
• Translation and chat products

18
Miscellaneous Issues

• Some communications packages strip MSB (not
  double-byte friendly)
• Bitmapped fonts dont scale or print well
  (outline fonts better)
• Double byte / cross language search engines are
  on the way
• www.ipo.com

19
Conclusions

• Applications abound for Hong Kong businesses
• Chinese language presents a challenge, but
  solutions exist
• Implementation strategy depends upon viewer
  platform, application
• Expertise exists in Hong Kong