internationalization

Internationalization

(AKA internationalisation, i18n.)

What can we do, to make microformats more easily usable, by people who are not publishing in (US) English?

Background

• Internet and web standards in general use US English terms and spelling (ref: W3C, IETF) for elements, attributes, properties and values.
  • e.g. (X)HTML is defined in US English (e.g "color", "center").
• However such standards also strongly advocate the support of character sets such as UTF-8 for broader/better support of international content.

Issues

• type attributes, such as those for tel in hCard, require either English-language content on the page, or English-language abbr titles.
  • March 2007 discussion (ongoing) of abbr title for non-English values. Is <abbr class="type" title="fax">Téléc</abbr> acceptable?
• Gender values in Genealogy

Solutions

• Use the HTML lang and diretion (dir) attributes wisely.
• For telephone numbers in hCard, use abbr and the ITU E.123 standard international format, for example:

<abbr class="tel" title="+44 1233 456 7890">01233 456 7890</abbr>

See also

• FAQ: How do microformats breach language barriers?
• hCards using UTF8
• accessibility

Internationalization/Localization References

• WC3 Internationalization and Localization - Lots of information in all areas.
• Wikipedia's definition - As well as further links to related articles.
• The Localization Industry Standards Association - Some information requires site registration (like the primer), but not paid membership. Specific marketing details require paid membership.
• Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox article on localization - To remind this is actually for people first.