Multilingual News & Articles

One of the Worldwide Web Consortium's (news, site) main responsibilities is ensuring that standards in web markup are followed. In the wake of stakeholder discussions, such as the recently concluded working group discussions on multilingual web content practices, the organization has released its updated Internationalization Checker.

The first two words of WWW mean "world wide," and this is one important aspect of the Web that the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) (news, site) is currently focusing on. With about 2 billion Internet users around the world across continents, not everyone is speaking the same language. Given the relative increase in use of non-English languages in Web content, the W3C recognizes the importance of standardizing access to multilingual content for best compatibility and usability.

With international love on its mind, Yammer (news, site) has made its collaboration platform -- a.k.a. "Facebook for the Enterprise" -- available in six new languages: Dutch, French, German, Japanese, Korean, and Spanish.

Heard all that talk about how important globalization and multilingual content management is? Well, the open source Web CMS makers Hippo (news, site) certainly have, as they include new translation features in the soon to come v7.5 release of Hippo CMS. Here’s the scoop.

One of the .NET CMS darlings Sitecore (news, site) extended its relationship with partner, Clay Tablet Technologies, on the globalization front. The main purpose is to automate content translation processes and workflows.

Common Sense Advisory analyst firm recently released their rankings of 16 content management systems attempting to answer the following question: “Which CMS delivers the best support for multilingual and multiregional use?”

Mary Laplante from Gilbane Group moderated a discussion at the Gilbane Conference San Fransisco on the complexities and options for building and effectively managing multilingual sites with an emphasis on strategies for making local sites compelling and attractive to users based on local preferences.

The days of a single, English-only version of your content are quickly coming to an end. Not only do you need to publish your content in multiple languages, your users need to be able to search said multilingual content quickly and accurately.

The spring has sprung, Magnolia blooms again. No, this is not another installation of #CMShaiku contest; it’s a release of version 4.3 of Magnolia CMS (news, site) that brings new templating capabilities designed for multi-language/multi-site content management scenarios, support for Groovy and Magnolia Store for modules management.

XML-based technical authoring tool provider MadCap (news, site) is back with a pretty sizable load of updates. In addition to the newest releases of their product suites—MadPak and MadPak ML (multilingual)—their publishing software, Flare 6.0, has added support for authoring to mobile devices.  

A great way to finish up my Friday. Taking a look at a third party SharePoint Multilingual Module. This one comes from a Quebec based company called AlphaMosaik.

Now we know that SharePoint 2007 offers us multilingual capabilities in the form of Variations, but this module goes farther, offering more languages and more functionality.

London-based Solid State Group is a U.K. web design agency that has developed its own CMS product, Cookie Jar, which is now up to version 7.

Montreal-based Ixiasoft (news, site) has just announced the general availability of the new version of its DITA content management system. Version 2.6 comes with several enhancements to v2.1 released in October 2008, when Ixiasoft added two new important features: the CMS Project Manager and the DITA Map Editor.

This time around, they have focused on improving search and search results interface, as well as strengthening the relationship map editor and overall CMS usability.

The release of Kentico (news, site) CMS v4.1 sees a number of upgrades to the Czech ASP.NET-based Web CMS that go beyond the usual bug fixes associated with a one point step-up.

Principal amongst those are an upgraded search engine, enhanced multilingual features and a new interface that enables the easy upload and manipulation of images.

If we don’t sound excited -- or even surprised -- well, that’s what you get for outlining exactly what you are going to include in your next update five months before you do it. Keeping promises is good though. All that really remains is to see whether Kentico CMS 4.1 has everything promised.

Hitting version 12.1, Vasont (news, site) adds a store-once, use-many system to help make translation more efficient with its publishing-focused content management system. 

Vasont's last update hit back in April and now the multi-format publishing system for non-technical users gets another boost. The latest update to Vasont Content Management System goes a few more steps in beefing up its usefulness in the international arena.

Having been in existence since 2002, in a SaaS offering nonetheless, Vasont has pretty much everything publishers need. But, there is always room for improvement. Features in the new update include:

• Improved Translation: Vasont now works at a component or granular level. Once a component is translated, it is saved and doesn't have to be translated again, saving time and resources, assuming your company repeats lots of standard phrases over and over again.
• Project Management: Vasont now includes drill down charts to help assess a project's health. Rescheduling has also been upgraded for both projects and component tasks. Modular management helps break down a big project into sub-components and it checks that these are all complete before allowing a project to be signed off and published.
• Additional Enhancements: Further additions include vector graphics support, variant master data -- which checks for similar components to prevent duplication and encourage reuse and improved search to help find content.

Vasont is available in several versions including a Client/Server, Hosted and a Small Groups edition for smaller outfits.