Policy for Authorized W3C
Translations
Introduction
This document describes the World Wide Web Consortium's (W3C) policy for
the creation and the publication of Authorized W3C Translations.
From its inception, W3C has made efforts to develop technologies that reach
and may serve a worldwide audience regardless of language or culture. To that
end, this policy is designed to achieve quality translations through a
process that relies on transparency and community accountability, with W3C
providing oversight of the process. Authorized W3C Translations can be used
for official purposes in languages other than English. Examples include: a
standardization authority in a country that wishes to standardize on a W3C
Recommendation, but requires the usage of a local language; or a local
government plans to reference the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines in
their regulations, but requires a translation of the guidelines in the local
language to do so.
This policy for authorized translations extends but does not
replace the volunteer translation policy described on the W3C’s public translations page. W3C continues
to welcome translations created by the volunteer translation process, and
these will continue to play an important role in allowing W3C technologies to
reach more people around the world. However, as emphasized in the note "e" below, none of the
translations created through the volunteer translation process are
automatically considered to be Authorized W3C Translations, hence they do not
have an official status. Of course, they may be the obvious candidates for
the process described in this document. In all cases and in case of dispute,
the authoritative version remains the English version (see the disclaimer boilerplate).
The publication steps are as follows. A note on terminology: the term
''W3C' refers to representatives of the W3C staff, as appointed by the W3C
Management.
- Lead Translation
Organization (LTO) Submission of Intent:
- An organization, interested in becoming the LTO
for developing an authorized translation of a specific W3C document,
notifies W3C of their intention using the general
publictranslators'
mailing list. This notification must include:
- identification of major and relevant stakeholder organizations
with which the LTO will coordinate the review of the translation.
The notification should clearly identify the nature and the
address of each of those organizations, and why that group
constitutes an appropriate representative of the local community.
If there is a W3C Host or Office
in that country, it must be part of that group. Note
also the requirements with regard to representation (see additional note 'b' below) particularly for
WAI documents, and prior translation of a lexicon (see additional note 'c' below).
- indication that the stakeholder organizations have already been
invited to participate in the process, and have agreed to do
so.
- W3C Evaluation of LTO Submission:
- W3C acknowledges the LTO's submission of intent to develop an
Authorized Translation. W3C may stop the process at this point,
either because it does not consider the submission to be acceptable
(see, for example, additional note 'g'), or
because it does not consider the required effort to be justified in
terms of the general operations of W3C. In general W3C will
not approve multiple authorized translations for the same
document and language, although issues such as French vs. Canadian
French, or Portuguese vs. Brazilian Portuguese will be considered on
a case-by-case basis.
- If the submission is approved by W3C, W3C notifies the LTO to
proceed with the preparation of a Candidate Authorized
Translation.
- LTO Preparation of Candidate Authorized Translation
(CAT).
- The LTO prepares a Candidate Authorized Translation (CAT) of the
document.
- When complete, the LTO announces the CAT and its URI on the translators'
mailing list..
- W3C Initiation of Review Process:
- W3C announces a review period of at least 30 days of the CAT on the
translators'
mailing list, specifying a separate, publicly archived mailing
list, in W3C or W3C Office Web space, to be used for commenting. This
mailing list may be a per-language list for all CATs in that
language, such as
public-auth-trans-hu@w3.org
for any
Hungarian CAT, or a list specifically set up for that CAT. All
comments on the CAT must be sent to this list. Postings to the
mailing list may either be in the language of translation or in
English.
- LTO Notification of Review, Monitoring of Comments, and
Revision of CAT:
- The LTO notifies the stakeholder organizations of the availability
of the CAT, the start of the review period, and the existence of the
mailing list for comments; directs them to send comments to this
mailing list; and copies this notification to the general translators'
mailing list.
- The LTO monitors the mailing list comments; provides clarification
when necessary; and summarizes consensus on specific issues (when
possible) to help the ongoing discussion.
- After the end of the review period, the LTO issues a new version of
the CAT as needed, and provides a list, in English and the language of translation, of
the points raised, and a summary of the discussions during the review
period, describing the problems found and solutions agreed with the
other reviewers. This summary must be posted both to the publicly
archived mailing list for this CAT, and to the general translators'
mailing list.
- In the event that no comments or only very few comments are
received during the review period, the LTO ensures that a majority of
the reviewing organizations send email to the translators' mailing
list confirming that they have in fact reviewed the document, and
that they consider it to be an accurate translation.
- The LTO then advises W3C whether a new review round is necessary or
not.
- W3C Response to LTO Summary:
- W3C considers the public comments and changes made to the CAT in
response to these comments, and decides, in coordination with the
LTO, whether the document can be designated an Authorized
Translation.
- If W3C decides that the document cannot yet be promoted to
Authorized Translation, it repeats the process from step 4.
- If W3C decides that the document can be promoted, then:
- The LTO delivers the document to W3C in valid XHTML with UTF-8
encoding, using the same presentation style as the original
document (via CSS style
sheets predefined by W3C) and following the guidelines of the
W3C I18N Activity
(for example, the proper usage of language
tags, encoding
declarations, handling
bidirectional text, etc.)
- The LTO adds a disclaimer to the document (see the section on disclaimer boilerplate) and
transfers the copyright of the document to W3C (MIT, ERCIM, and
Keio).
- W3C publishes the authorized translation on the W3C site
(either on the W3C server or on the site of a local W3C Office,
whenever applicable), and adds the new translation to W3C Translations’ site.
Authorized W3C Translations should be clearly identifiable, eg,
via a separate list on the page, and/or a distinctive visual
style, etc.
- Errata management:
- The LTO has to set up and maintain a public "errata page" (linked
from the document, see the section on disclaimer
boilerplate). This page is a list of translation errors, and
their corrections. Errata can be reported through the mailing list
that served as a review, or by any other publicly archived mailing
list that the LTO sets up; that mailing list must be clearly
identified on the errata page. The LTO must keep the errata page
up-to-date.
Additional Notes and Requirements
- Related to step 1: Many different types of organizations can be "lead
translating organizations". For example, it can be the local W3C Office,
a university research group, the local branch of ISO, a specific
disability organization. In some, exceptional, cases it may also be an
individual whose translation work is well known to W3C already.
- Related to step 1.1: for example, in
the case of WAI documents, this should include local disability
organizations and accessibility research organizations. As another
example, for a Semantic Web specification, this should include
representatives of the major research and/or university groups active in
the area.
- Related to step 1.1: in some cases,
usage of specific glossaries is required and the Authorized Translation
of the necessary subset is a prerequisite for the Authorized Translations
of other documents. This is the case, for example, for certain WAI
documents where the "Basic Glossary for WAI
Documents" should be used.
- Related to steps 2 and 6: whenever appropriate, W3C will involve the
local W3C Host or Office staff in the
assessment.
- None of the existing translations (listed on
theW3C Translations’ site) is
automatically promoted to an Authorized Translation. LTO's should follow
the steps described in the Policy for Authorized Translations if they
wish to have an existing translation promoted, however they may wish to
propose their existing translation as a Candidate Authorized
Translation.
- Any translation of a new version of a W3C document should go through
the same process.
- This policy applies to full and
stable W3C documents only, and not for abbreviated versions,
excerpts, or W3C Working Drafts. While the obvious documents to
translate are W3C Recommendations, some W3C Activities
maintain a list of additional documents whose translations are welcome.
This is the case for the the WAI or the QA activities.
- If the document has normative references to other W3C Recommendations,
the references to the original, English version should be kept in the
translation. An exception to this rule is if there is already an
Authorized Translation in that language. In that case, both the
reference to the original English text and the Authorized
Translation should be used.
- Whenever possible, figures in the document should also be translated
(if the translator can get access to the original source files for the
images). Also '
alt
' attributes to HTML 'img'
elements, 'title
' attributes to, e.g., 'a
'
elements, etc, should be translated. However, the text in example code
(for instance XML element names) should not be translated, as the risk of
the translation leading to syntactic or semantic errors in the example
code is too high.
- Once the authorized translation has been published, the LTO is
responsible for the errata management. Over time the LTO may wish to hand
this task over to another organization. For a new organization to be
accepted as a (new) LTO, it has to understand and accept all
responsibilities listed in step 7.
Important: The following text should be added at the top of each
translation. All text in this disclaimer, except for the original title and
the reference to the LTO at the top, must be in the target language.
Judy Brewer, Ivan Herman, last updated on $Date: 2005/11/04 17:41:51 $ by
$Author: ivan $
Copyright ©
1994-2005 W3C (MIT, ERCIM, Keio), All Rights Reserved. W3C liability, trademark, document use and software licensing rules
apply. Your interactions with this site are in accordance with our public and Member privacy statements.