OASIS XLIFF TC liaison with MultilingualWeb-LT

["Dr. David Filip" <David.Filip@ul.ie>]

Hi all,

on last TC meeting I have proposed on behalf of the Promotion and Liaison subcommittee that we form a liaison relationship with W3C MultilingualWeb-LT Working Group. 

The relationship between XLIFF TC and W3C Internationalization Activity has been traditionally good. We had on the 1st XLIFF symposium a presentation by Christian Lieske and Prof. Felix Sasaki on the secret mariage between XLIFF and ITS. Now, P&L SC recommends to bring the relationship with the MultilingualWeb-LT working group (that has been mandated to produce an ITS successor) to the official liaison level. [See WG Charter]

MultilingualWeb-LT has named OASIS XLIFF TC as its only external dependency (relationship stronger than simple liaison, WG must officially respond to queries and issues logged on behalf of  XLIFF TC).

MultilingualWeb-LT works on content metadata with localization roundtripping in mind; the main goal is to bridge the gap between content authoring and content localization standards. The WG recognizes the importance of XLIFF as the pivotal localization standard that is critical for localization roundtripping. XLIFF TC considers having native support for ITS (feature C3 on wiki) 

Therefore there exist a few areas where the groups need to work together.

1. XLIFF TC providing business requirements to MultilingualWeb-LT, so that semantic match between the standards is secured early on.
1. MultilingualWeb-LT will be in requirements gathering phase for several months. The feature freeze will be in November 2012.
2. Representation of  MultilingualWeb-LT metadata using XLIFF 1.2
1. Have a "profile' or mutual understanding on the best practice
3. Most importantly, both groups should strive to have native representation of  MultilingualWeb-LT  metadata categories in XLIFF 2.0  

  

David Filip, co-chair of MultilingualWeb-LT, has been appointed MultilingualWeb-LT liaison at XLIFF TC.

XLIFF Promotion and Liaison SC nominated Arle Lommel as XLIFF TC liaison at MultilingualWeb-LT.

The liaison will report to the P&L SC, which in turn reports at least monthly to XLIFF TC.

The main duties of the liaison at MultilingualWeb-LT shall be:

1) Ensure that XLIFF TC viewpoint (localization roundtrip) is well represented during the requirements gathering. 

2) Follow up on queries and issues logged by XLIFF TC and its members to ensure that they are well addressed according to W3C WG process throughout draft, test suit, till final recommendation.

3) Identify and promote opportunities for common non-normative best practice notes. 

Please use this week for discussion of pros and cons of having such a liaison. Unless the discussion reveals some grave issues that the P&L SC has not considered so far, I will formally propose early next week an electronic ballot on forming this liaison as described above.

Thanks and regards

dF

Dr. David Filip

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LRC | CNGL | LT-Web | CSIS

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