The MultilingualWeb-LT Project
Building on the success of the MultilingualWeb thematic network and with funding from the European Commission, the work of this project was carried out at the W3C by the MultilingualWeb-LT Working Group.
This core outcome of the project was the standardization of Internationalization Tag Set (ITS) Version 2.0 and the creation of ITS 2.0 reference implementations. ITS 2.0 defines metadata for web content (mainly HTML5) and "deep Web" content (for example a CMS or XML files from which HTML pages are generated) that facilitates its interaction with multilingual technologies and localization processes. A brief summary of the standardization process and a description of underlying usage scenarios are available. In addition to the ITS 2.0 standardization, the MultilingualWeb-LT project held a number of public events and working group meetings. Two of these events were MultilingualWeb workshops, contributing both to the development of ITS 2.0, and also bringing together stakeholders from the various multilingual web communities to network and share information about the various evolving standards and best practices.
Post-project activity and how to participate
The MultilingualWeb-LT Working Group will be shut down at the end of 2013; work on usage scenarios for ITS 2.0 and gathering of implementation experience is taking place in the ITS Interest Group. Everybody is free to contribute. For more information see especially the current work items and the mailing list of the group.
The ITS 2.0 specification focuses on metadata for HTML5 and XML content, but also touches upon multilingual issues in Linked Data and provides a conversion of ITS 2.0 into Linked Data. Applications of ITS 2.0 within linked data is one topic of the LIDER project which started in November 2013. LIDER will continue the general MultilingualWeb brand and also dive deeper into linked data related topics.
Useful links
MultilingualWeb Project reports and other documents
The EU project and additional contributors produced public deliverables. The aforehand mentioned documents describing ITS 2.0 usage scenarios and implementations are living documents
and are maintained by the Interest group. The project also created a YouTube channel about ITS 2. This will provide a general introduction and implementation specific videos.
Talks and further dissemination material about the project
The ITS Interest group provides a page about ITS outreach material.
Partners & People
The following table lists representatives of partners in the MultilingualWeb-LT EU project, ITS 2.0 specification editors and further implementers. In addition, the contributors to the ITS 2.0 specification are gratefully acknowledged.
| Organisation | Contacts | Areas of expertise |
Country |
|---|---|---|---|
| Adobe | Des Oates |
Localization, localization tools, content management | US |
| Cocomore AG | Karl Fritsche, Michael Kruppa, Alejandro Leiva, Stephan Walter, Clemens Weins | Content management systems | Germany |
| DFKI (coordinator) | Felix Sasaki, Arle Lommel |
Language technology | Germany |
| Disruptive Innovations | Daniel Glazman |
Browser technology | France |
| Dublin City University | Declan Groves, John Judge, Qun Lui, Ankit Srivastava | Machine translation | Ireland |
| ENLASO Corporation | Yves Savourel | Localization, localization tools | US |
| ]init[ | Steffen Haller, Matthias Kandora, Sebastian Sklarß |
Content management | Germany |
| Institut Jozef Stefan | Marko Grobelnik, Tadej Štajner |
Machine learning, data mining | Slovenia |
| LINGUASERVE Internacionalizacion Deservicios SA | Pablo Badia, Mauricio del Olmo, Giuseppe Deriard, Pedro Luis Diez Orzas, Pablo Nieto Caride | Language services, translation tools | Spain |
| Logrus | Renat Bikmatov, Serge Gladkoff |
Language services, translation tools | Russia |
| Lucy Software | Daniel Grasmick, Thomas Rüdesheim |
Machine translation | Germany |
| Microsoft Ireland Research | Dag Schmidtke, Jan Nelson |
Localization, localization tools, browser development | Ireland |
| Moravia IT AS | Milan Karasek |
Localization, language technologies | Czech Republic |
| SAP AG | Christian Lieske | Translation services, Content engineering | Germany |
| Tilde | Tatiana Gornostay, Peteris Nikiforovs, Marcis Pinnis |
Localization, language technology | Latvia |
| Trinity College Dublin | Dave Lewis, Dominic Jones, Leroy Finn | Localization, semantic technologies | Ireland |
| University of Economics Prague | Jirka Kosek | XML technologies | Czech Republic |
| University of Limerick | David Filip | Localization and related standardization | Ireland |
| VistaTEC | Phil Ritchie |
Localization, localization tools | Ireland |
