i18N-Creating Multilingual Web Sites-Overview

Description

Do you want to reach more people and generate more orders with a multilingual Web site? Do you want to help your customers set up their own multilingual Web site in a manner that will make localization easier? Do you want to increase your expertise in the quickly growing field of Web globalization?

This workshop first discusses why businesses should globalize their Web sites and why both customers and vendors will often encounter surprising complexities in the process. In particular, the seemingly simple issue of handing off the Web site content is shown to be quite complex and full of pitfalls.

The language support features of the fundamental Web technologies (HTML, CSS, XML, XSL) are then presented. You will learn how to apply these features to the design of both static ("brochureware") and transactional Web sites.

Are you sure your investment in translating Web pages has not been wasted? Learn how to ensure Web users find the pages available in their language. Learn also how to produce multilingual forms and how to retrieve multilingual data from them.

The workshop wraps up by showing how to design and build a multilingual Web sites: domain names, file organization, database modifications, content deployment strategy are all covered. This is completed by a brief overview of Globalization Management Systems: systems designed precisely for the purpose of automating Web localization workflow.

Learn by example. A fully functional internationalized Web site is built as the workshop evolves. This example site uses HTML forms and stores data in an Access database.

Who will benefit from this workshop and why?

Who:	Interested in...
Translation Agencies Translators Localization Engineers	Your customers expect you to have expertise in translating and adapting Web pages to other languages and cultures How to organize the Web site hand-off to avoid problems How to modify HTML pages and style sheets for multilingual support How to help your customers improve their deliverables to provide them with better results at a better cost
Web Masters Web Developers Web Designers	Organize your multilingual Web development effort How to define and organize your files and style sheets How to provide the proper language to the user How to deal with language & character set information Ensure consistency in the language approach Understand globalization workflow
Executives International Directors Localization Managers	The successful deployment of multilingual web sites can be critical to your business success; in E-Commerce, it IS your business Standards & industry best practices for multilingual Web sites An overall view of language issues for the Web The role and value of Web Globalization Management Systems (GMS).
Marketing and Product Managers	Approaches that maintain a consistent branding image; i.e. the same look and feel for all languages Understand how your Web solutions are brought to market
Documentation Content Managers	How to reduce HTML translation costs Creation of international style sheets
Test Managers Testers	Understand how multilingual web sites work What standards exist What are the risk areas What can go wrong

About i18N workshops

At i18N Inc., we are committed to providing a high-quality learning experience. We design all of our workshops based on the following principles:

visual & intuitive: tables, graphics, animation & video provide extreme clarity
lots of content: rich, relevant content; our handouts can serve as reference
abstract models: we consider the forest first, then the trees (then the bugs!)
no sales pitch: our only sales pitch is the quality of our workshops

"Over the past ten years, LISA has provided numerous workshops on a variety of topics. Pierre has provided the highest quality Internationalization, and Web-Globalization workshops at our conferences and is the best rated workshop instructor we have" -- Michael Anobile, Director, LISA (www.lisa.org).

About Pierre Cadieux

Pierre Cadieux is the technology editor for the LISA newsletter and the president of i18N Inc. (www.i18n.ca), a firm specializing in internationalization training and consulting. He also teaches internationalization at University of Montreal. Pierre has over twenty years experience in the industry; his globalization experience covers embedded systems, shrink-wrap software and Web sites.

Formerly VP Technology at Alis Technologies Inc., he pioneered the transparent handling of Arabic and Hebrew languages and created the core bi-directional technology licensed by Microsoft. At Alis, he designed the internationalization strategy for all products, including the TANGO multilingual Web browser. He has sat on CSA and ISO committees on character sets and multilingual data coding.

As Director of Localization Technology at Bowne Global Solutions, he carried out research and analysis on multilingual Web sites and published the first generic model of Globalization Management Systems.

As a freelance consultant, Pierre is often sought after to consult and to train on these issues as well as traditional software internationalization. He can be reached at pcadieux@i18n.ca.