Do you want to sell your software applications worldwide? Do you want your eBusiness Web site to be useable and effective globally? Internationalization will get you there faster and cheaper. Why? Because if you want to offer your product in 8,12 or 20 languages, internationalization is about doing things once rather than 8, 12 or 20 times.

Internationalization is the first step of a two-step process. It consists in generalizing your product to be as language-independent as required. The second step - localization - consists in adapting the product to meet the needs of different languages and cultures. Internationalization reduces cost and time-to-market by making localization easier and avoiding work duplication.

This workshop will prepare you for all aspects of an internationalization project. You will know the issues, you will know the pitfalls and you will know the solutions. The workshop will provide you with a clear understanding of industry best practices, how to apply them and what their benefits are.

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Unicode, Multilingual Databases and Asian Character Sets
Establishing The Proper Foundation For Your Global Product

If you are thinking about internationalizing your product, in order to produce localized versions for Asia or the rest of the world, your first decision will be about how to represent your data. Will you use Unicode? or local character sets? or both? What laws can influence your decision? And what issues arise when using Unicode? What encoding should you use? What are the benefits and costs? This uniquely unbiased workshop answers these questions by presenting Unicode's strong and weak points in a clear, incisive manner.

The workshop begins with a short history of character sets leading up to Unicode, from Unicode 1.0 to the current Unicode 4.0. The basic Unicode encodings (UTF-8, UTF-16, UTF-32), as well as other representations (CESU-8, SCSU, BOCU-1) are presented along with their pros and cons. Next, the four normalization forms and their applications are discussed. Unicode implementation issues are presented, notably concerning text manipulation and fonts. The next section is devoted entirely to database issues, from schema design to Unicode migration. The workshop then covers the latest Asian character sets: Korea's KS X 1001 versions, China's GB18030, Hong Kong's SCS and Japan's JIS X 0213 and their implications, both technical and legal (including conformance requirements).

This workshop will show you how to determine your data representation strategy and where Unicode fits in. You will learn what encoding to use, when to normalize, how to deal with fonts and databases and how to conform to the legal requirements in Asia. You will be ready to move, with confidence, to the next step in your internationalization project.

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Internationalization & Localization Testing
Successfully Testing Multilingual Software And Web Sites

Do you want to create a multilingual testing capacity in your organization? Do you want to offer multilingual testing services to your customers? Do you want to globalize your existing monolingual test organization?

This workshop teaches the fundamentals of internationalization and localization testing. Both management and technical aspects are covered in a practical, pragmatic manner. Numerous examples and actual samples of test plans, test cases and test strategies are provided.

This workshop will show you how to test in all target languages and on all target platforms in a cost effective manner. You will learn how to set up a testing organization along with associated workflow, planning and management structures. You will learn how to leverage industry best practices, methods, tools and techniques. You will learn what to test and how to test it. This knowledge will be ready-to-use the very next day!

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Maintaining a large volume of constantly changing content synchronized in multiple languages is extremely difficult, be it for the corporate Web site, or for the many sources of documentation throughout the enterprise. Modern Content Management Systems (CMS) help manage the creation, editing and deployment of content; however, most CMS do not satisfy the requirements for translation and multilingual deployment.

Globalization Management Systems (GMS) are complex software systems designed to solve this problem. They offer automated workflow that can detect changed documents and route them to translators. They offer centralized translation memory to reduce translation costs and centralized terminology management to ensure consistent global branding. They also provide the client corporation with an overall picture of translation requirements (which are currently buried in a variety of budgets and expense reports).

This workshop provides an intuitive visual model describing the components of GMS systems and uses this model to compare the offerings of Convey, GlobalSight, LTC, IDIOM, SDL, STAR and Trados. It will clarify the differences between the GMS and show you how to choose the right GMS for your needs. It will help you save money by achieving your objectives better and faster.

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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 focuses first on the language support features of the fundamental Web technologies: HTML, CSS, XML, XSL, etc. You will then 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.

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.

More complex presentation issues are also addressed; these include: Japanese ruby, Unicode and HTML bi-directional controls for Arabic and Hebrew, and multilingual fonts. What standards exist and to what extent they are currently supported by Internet Explorer and Firefox, will be covered.

The workshop also addresses the architecture of multilingual Web sites, i.e. how to organize HTML pages into a maintainable structure that supports the localization process. The workshop concludes with a brief overview of systems designed precisely for the purpose of automating entirely the Web localization process; the so-called Globalization Management Systems.

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Have you ever had to take a product and adapt it to the world market? Have you ever had to gather multilingual software requirements? How can you describe requirements which vary for different locales? Have you ever had a tight budget forcing you to choose which features to implement and which features to defer? Did you face this problem on a global scale?

Requirements are a critical part of any software project and become extremely complex when simultaneously facing the needs of different locales. This workshop shows you how to systematically approach requirement management for software projects independent of your development process.

The workshop walks you through all phases of a requirement life cycle including elicitation, elaboration, workflow, prioritization, development, testing, deployment and support. Several real life examples from successful globalization projects are covered. You will take home tools, templates and techniques that you can use right away!

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Do you want to do business in the Arabic countries? Do you want to create an Arabic Web Site? Do you want to adapt your software to the Arabic market? Do you want to author Arabic documents in Word, PDF or email formats? Do you want to process Arabic data efficiently?

This workshop teaches the key aspects of Arabic Language Information Processing. It covers the Arabic language and culture and the special relationship between them. We explain the contextual rules of Arabic writing and show various types of Arabic ligatures.

We will look at Arabic characters, how they are entered, stored and displayed. All important Arabic coding systems will be covered. The features of bi-directional writing will be explained: directional characters, neutral characters, mirror characters etc. The Unicode algorithm will be discussed, and simple rules to follow in Word and HTML will be presented.

The workshop then covers the various tools available today to help process Arabic data and concludes by presenting insights and experience on doing business in the Arabic world (partnerships, sponsorships, transactions, etc.)

After taking this workshop you will be ready to target the Arabic market with your product: you will know how to do business, what requirements to consider, what changes your software or Web site or embedded system requires, and how to implement those changes.

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Preparing Software And Web Sites For Translation
An Overview of Internationalization for Translators

Internationalization is the little-known art of making translation easier. It means happier translators because the work will be more interesting and more efficient. It also means happier customers, because translation will be more cost-effective and time-to-market will be shorter. The result is a better relationship with your customer that will ultimately generate more business.

This workshop is designed to provide translators with a clear understanding of what internationalization is about: what the issues are, why it is important and how it is performed.

The workshop starts by describing the issues that are involved; issues that programmers should be concerned with (but often are not). It then describes the business implications and benefits of internationalization. It will show you how to explain to your customers what internationalization is and why it is necessary.

The remaining chapters describe, in non-technical terms, the actual tasks involved in internationalization. You will learn what programmers and managers actually must do during an internationalization project.

Internationalization is strategic; it allows you to add a new (and rare) service to your offering, thus expanding your image. It allows you to work more closely with your customer but, most importantly, it allows you to be involved earlier in the product development cycle (rather than as an afterthought once the product or Web site is finished). Internationalization helps you partner with your customer and streamline the translation process.

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Introduction to Translation Management Systems
Globalization Technology for Web sites, Software and Documents

Translation Management Systems (TMS) are sophisticated systems designed to help manage the translation process. Main features include connectors that provide access to content anywhere in the enterprise, centralized translation memory and terminology management, automated workflow, project management interfaces, work distribution, etc.

The connectors are particularly interesting because they connect to any source material in your customer's systems, automatically detect change, send you the content to be translated and deliver the translated results back to the customer, all automatically. Imagine a continuous pipeline of work between you and your customer!

Customers also benefit from TMS due to better visibility and control over the totality of their translation requirements, as well as better visibility into translation projects as they are being executed.

This workshop presents a generic TMS reference model that illustrates the major components and functions of these systems and how they interact. Using the model, the main features of GlobalSight, IDIOM, LTC, SDL and TRADOS are presented.

Whether you need to buy a TMS, or recommend one to your customers, or simply choose one to work with as a translator, this workshop will clarify the differences between the TMS and show you how to choose the right TMS for your needs.

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