RE: [xliff] HTML Profile - Language Switching

[David Pooley <dpooley@sdl.com>]

For this specific case, I would have thought it possible to use the <mrk>
element with mtype='phrase' and the xml:lang attribute (as <mrk> allows
extensions). However, this may not be possible if the HTML in question is
not well formed (HTML 4.01 rather than XHTML):

<source xml:lang='en'>She added that "<bpt id='1'>&lt;span
lang='fr'></bpt><mrk mtype="phrase" xml:lang='fr'>je ne sais quoi</mrk><ept
id='1'>&lt;/span></ept>" that made her casserole absolutely
delicious.</source>

There may be a better mtype to use or perhaps we should encourage the use of
a mtype='x-langswitch'

David Pooley
Software Architect
SDL International


-----Original Message-----
From: Yves Savourel [mailto:ysavourel@translate.com]
Sent: 24 March 2004 15:38
To: XLIFF Main List
Subject: [xliff] HTML Profile - Language Switching


Hi all,

Here is another question we may have to answer for the HTML mapping to
XLIFF.


======================================== QUESTION:

How can we represent language switching?

--- HTML Source Example:

<p>She added that <span lang='fr'>je ne sais quoi</span> that made 
her casserole absolutely delicious.</p>

--- Discussion:

The basic XLIFF representation for this would be somethin like this:

<source xml:lang='en'>She added that "<bpt id='1'>&lt;span
lang='fr'></bpt>je ne 
sais quoi<ept id='1'>&lt;/span></ept>" that made her casserole absolutely 
delicious.</source>

The problem is that from the XLIFF viewpoint we loose the information about
the language switch. This could be a problem for some function such as
spell-checking.

First question: Is is important enough for us to worry about it?

If yes, while using xml:lang is technically possible since the inline
elements have extension points for attributes, it would not work with <bpt>,
but would with <g>:

<source xml:lang='en'>She added that "<g id='1' xml:lang='fr'>je ne 
sais quoi</g>" that made her casserole absolutely delicious.</source>

But with <bpt>, a xml:lang attribute would apply to the '<span>' code rather
than the text inside the <span>.

If a file uses the <bpt> notation, how could we represent the language
switch then?




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