🚀 go-pugleaf

Here is an overview of the GLOSSASOFT project, in which our
organisation "N.C.S.R. Demokritos, Athens, Greece" is
participating.

You can also find a questionnaire on S/W localisation,
we are distributing to S/W companies, to collect information
on the localiation processes followed.

We are waiting for your comments. It would help a lot
if you could provide any input, especially related to
the issues examined in the questionnaire.

Best Regards
Costas Spyropoulos





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                              GLOSSASOFT

                         LRE PROJECT No 61003

    METHODS AND GUIDELINES FOR INTERLINGUALITY IN SOFTWARE CONSTRUCTION

                            PROJECT OVERVIEW



Background

Software applications are produced, in most of the cases, with English
interface and documentation, assuming that the users have some level of
competence in English. However, with the growth of computer systems
market, the need to have systems communicating with the users in their mother
tongue became overwhelming. A user that desires to have a computer in
his/her desk is more likely to purchase one with software working in his/her
native language and not in English. Major software companies have to satisfy
the user needs, to earn a position in the global market. The word purchase is
the key. Creating international versions of software is just good business.

Whenever a software program is written, it is adapted to the culture and the
language of the S/W engineer. The process of extracting the culturally and
linguistically dependent part of the software applications is called
internationalisation. Script specific aspects (character encoding, character
sizes, line size and spacing), language specific aspects (collating sequence,
hyphenation rules, morphological rules), numbers and dates, societal
conventions, icons and symbols, the use of colour, the use of a controlled
language by technical writers are some of the issues that have to be
investigated in an internationalisation process.

Localisation is the opposite process, since it takes a previously
internationalised software application adding features and elements that better
match the target culture and marketplace. The transparent input/output of the
local language, the translation of menus, messages, help scripts, on-line
tutorials, manuals are issues that must be handled in a localisation process.

Public, commonly agreed guidelines and methods must be defined to support
the internationalisation and localisation process. Tools must be specified and
developed to assist the software developers and the localisers.

Started in January 1993, the GLOSSASOFT project will assist the efforts
towards the production of commonly agreed guidelines, methods and tools
specifications, and it is expected to provide an initial set of them by January
1994, while the final ones will be released by March 1995.



Objectives

GLOSSASOFT aims:
-to produce guidelines for the internationalisation of new and existing software
applications,
-to produce guidelines, methods and to specify tools for the localisation of
internationalised software applications,
-to apply these results on several case studies,
-to promote the adoption of its results by relevant organisations/associations
and the software companies.



Organisation

The participating organisations in this project are the following:
	-Open University, United Kingdom (coordinator)
	-National Centre for Scientific Research (N.C.S.R.)
	 "Demokritos", Greece (partner)
	-Claris, Ireland (associate partner to Open University)
	-Hewlett-Packard Hellas, Greece (associate partner to "Demokritos")
	-VTT (Technical Research Center of Finland), Finland (partner)

An Interest Group has already been formed from various companies and
academic organisations. At this stage the Interest Group members are the
following:
	-BULL I.L.O, France (possible subcontractor to Open University)
	-Rank Xerox, United Kingdom
	-SRI International, United Kingdom
	-Logica Cambridge, United Kingdom
	-DEC, United Kingdom
	-MIST Centre d'etudes de Saclay, France
       	-IDSIA, Switzerland
We expect the Interest Group to be extended considerably during project's
evolution, since there are several requests to participate in it, at the moment.



Project Description

GLOSSASOFT is now at its first foundation phase. Two parallel studies are
currently running. The first one concerns with the linguistics and Natural
Language Processing (NLP) technologies (Natural Language Analysis &
Generation, Machine Translation (MT) Tools, Resources, Knowledge
Representation Models) and the second one investigates the current software
and system architectures (existing types of systems from user interfaces and
window managers, database systems to spreadsheets and desk top publishing;
aspects of software reuse) that are appropriate for software
internationalisation.
A workshop was held at Open University, in Milton Keynes (2-3 February
1993) concerning the commercial requirements on software
internationalisation.
The workshop results together with input from several visits to companies and
international/European workshops on relevant subjects, are studied and will
appear in a document entitled "Commercial Requirements for Interlinguality in
S/W construction". This document is in its final stage of release. We are also
establishing links with relevant organisations/associations and projects (LISA,
EAMT, ...) in order to improve and promote the project's results in the current
and subsequent phases.

In the second phase a first version of guidelines, methods and tools
specifications will be produced, based on the results of the first phase. Also
appropriate technical terminologies in English, Greek, French and Finnish will
be accumulated to be used in the case studies of the third phase, where the
produced guidelines, methods and tools specifications will be evaluated.
During these case studies we expect to develop a few prototype tools to assist
the localisation process. There are three case studies on S/W applications
written in English, at the moment:

-Hewlett Packard's VUE (Visual User Environment) a Graphical User Interface
for Unix workstations, will be localised into Greek by "Demokritos" and HP
Hellas,
-Claris Help Systems will be localised into French by the Open University and
Claris,
-VTT's Risk Tool, a system for risk assessment and monitoring of software
projects, will be localised into Finnish by VTT.

In the fourth and final phase we will finalise the development of the guidelines,
methods and tools specifications, incorporating the experience gained in the
case studies including a wider class of languages and adding deeper features of
software internationalisation and localisation. At the end of this phase a
dissemination programme and two seminars will be carried out, in order to
make the project's results widely available, promoting their adoption by the
S/W companies and relevant organisations/associations.



Contact Points

Open University,
Walton Hall, Milton Keynes, MK7 6AA,
United Kingdom
Tel: +44-908-652694
Fax: +44-908-653744
Prof. Patrick Hall, e-mail: p.a.v.hall@open.ac.uk
Mr. Ray Hudson, e-mail: r.hudson@open.ac.uk


National Centre for Scientific Research "Demokritos",
Institute of Informatics & Telecommunications,
15310 Aghia Paraskevi, Attiki,
Greece
Tel: +301-6510310
Fax: +301-6532175
Dr. Costas Spyropoulos, e-mail: costass@estia.nrcps.ariadne-t.gr
Mr. Vangelis Karkaletsis, e-mail: vangelis@estia.nrcps.ariadne-t.gr


Claris Ireland,
Ballycoolin Business Park,
Blanchards Town, Dublin 15,
Republic of Ireland
Tel: +353-1-8206900
Fax: +353-1-8206864
Mrs Niamh McHugh, e-mail: niamh_mchugh@qm.claris.com


Hewlett Packard Hellas,
62, Kifissias Av., 15125 Maroussi, Athens,
Greece
Tel: +301-6896411
Fax: +301-6896512
Mr. Costas Kalpakas, e-mail: kalpakas_costas/hp7100_d9@gva.hp.com







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                        GLOSSASOFT


         GLOSSASOFT is a research and development project
         financed in part by the CEC DG XIII, Luxembourg,
     under the Linguistic Research & Engineering Programme (LRE)


            Questionnaire on Software Localisation



SECTION 1 - OVERVIEW

1. Please provide a brief overview of S/W localisation in your company:
   a) Do you have a localisation group?
   b) What is the size and the composition of the localisation group
      (e.g. number of developers, linguists, translators, technical writers)?
   c) What are the major types of S/W applications you localise?
      (e.g. operating systems, wordprocessors, speadsheets, DBMSs,
       desk top publishing, etc.)
   d) Which are the basic steps followed in the localisation process?
   e) Do you use an internal  "S/W localisation guide"?
   f) How are you planning your company's S/W localisation process?



SECTION 2 - LINGUISTICS

1. Which languages do you translate to?

2. a) Do your translators work "in house" or outside (in translation agencies
      in your or even in another country)?
   b) Do your translators translate into their mother tongue only?
   c) Are your translators grouped in separate teams
      (documentation, software teams)?
   d) Do your proof readers proof their mother tongue only?

3. a) Do your technical writers use a controlled language in writing S/W manuals
      and user interfaces, in order to facilitate translation (human, machine or
      human assisted machine translation)?
   b) Are they trained in using such a language?
   c) What are the components of this language (e.g. a controlled vocabulary,
      a restricted set of writing/grammar rules)?
   c) Is this language based on some standards?
   d) Do you use tools that check the use of the controlled language?
      What kind of tools?

4. Do you use a "translation memory" approach (e.g. collecting existing messages
   in some "messages data base", classifying them and localising them into the
   target languages)?

5. a) Do you use a Terminological Data Base (TDB) of the terms contained in your
      S/W applications?
   b) Is it multilingual?
   c) How is it organised? Is it structured?
   d) Is it linked with the controlled language mentioned above?
   e) What types of information it contains?
   f) Does it cover special application domains? Are there different TDBs for
      different application domains?
   g) Is it based on some standards?
   h) Do you use any tools for the management (e.g. acquisition, maintenance,
      consistency checking, etc.) of the knowledge contained in the TDB?

6. a) Do you use a Lexicon of the words contained in your S/W applications?
   b) Is it multilingual?
   c) How is it organised? Is it structured?
   d) Is it linked with the controlled language mentioned above?
   e) Is it linked with a conceptual Knowledge Base?
   f) What types of information it contains (e.g. morphological, syntactic,
      semantic, contextual)?
   g) Does it cover special application domains?
   h) Is it based on some standards?
   i) Do you use any tools for the management (e.g. acquisition, maintenance,
      consistency checking, etc.) of the knowledge contained in the lexicon?

7. a) Do you use machine translation (MT) tools?
   b) What is the type of the MT used (e.g. direct, transfer, interlingual)?
   c) Can you provide a brief description of the following MT phases,
      if possible?
         -Preedditing phase.
         -Automatic or Interactive editing phase (the actual translation
          phase) in which Natural Language Analysis and Generation
          are applied.
         -Postediting phase.

8. a) Do you use any computer-based tools (not mentioned before) to speed up
      the translation process and facilitate multi-lingual text processing
      and technical writing (e.g. spelling, grammar, style and layout checkers,
      text processing utilities)?



SECTION 3 - OTHER

1. Please provide a brief description of already localised S/W applications
   (e.g. in what languages they have been localised, time and cost figures).

2. Please provide us with contact persons from your S/W localisation team  for
   further communication.

3. Any other information you consider relevant.






CONTACT PERSONS:

National Centre of Scientific Research (N.C.S.R.) "Demokritos"
Institute of Informatics & Telecommunications
15310 Aghia Paraskevi, Attiki, Greece

   Dr. C.D. Spyropoulos
   Tel: +301-6510310
   Fax: +301-6532175
   e-mail: costass@estia.nrcps.ariadne-t.gr

   Mr. V. Karkaletsis
   Tel: +301-6510310
   Fax: +301-6532175
   e-mail: vangelis@estia.nrcps.ariadne-t.gr