Feb
16
I am constantly amazed how poorly software is suited to handle multiple languages. Internationalization. Difficult, multi-syllable word.
This can be split into two sub-problems. First, handling other languages. Usually it means non-English, but "language nationalism" applies to other software too. Ruby, for example can handle Japanese strings out of the box, but you have to enable unicode by hand to handle the rest. The most popular polish IM does not send unicode, not at all. Python has strings and unicode strings. Two different datatypes. You have to a/ use unicode from the day zero of the project and b/ constantly control yourself not to use regular, single-character strings. Java defines strings as two-byte unicode, while UTF8 for example uses different sized chars – from one to four bytes.
The situation is not perfect, but it gets better. Python 3000 will have unicode strings as a base type. GoogleTalk handles any encoding.
The second sub-problem though is a different story. The issue is: handling many languages at the same time. I was recently looking for a free CMS-like tool which could allow both layout elements and content to be presented in user-selected language. Maybe I wasn't looking hard enough but I found none. I ended up writing a custom plugin for Wordpress (I'll post it here once it's ready).
This makes me wonder: there are tons of sites where I can choose a language. Does it mean every version is maintained separately? Does each site's owners build their own software for i18n?
Or – what stroke me as I was writing last paragraph – the truly dynamic sites, those with a lot of content, simply does not have multiple language versions?
The web is global. There are few times more users outside your language than with your language. Do you – you, the site owner – agree to ignore them?
The problem does not concern websites only. I work in an international company. Sometimes I give presentations. I can expect that people from different cultural backgrounds will come. English, American, German, Italian. However, most often the presentation is given to a monolithic group of Polish speakers. But the sole possibility of a single foreigner forces me to prepare the presentation in English. Safe choice, everybody understand English. I'd like to make the presentation in different languages and switch on the fly. No software gives me such possibility.
Sure, I could create two, three versions of the slides. The problem is, the burden of maintaining several copies of the same slides make it non-practical.
I could just not care. But I'd like to show some courtesy to the listeners.
Having ranted that long, I write here in English only. Sheesh