Translations on the Fly
By John Pearson
For those of us attempting to take advantage
of the world-wide aspect of the World Wide Web, internationalization is a significant issue. Although English is the lingua franca of the Web and, by association, of global trade, the fact remains that a majority of people in the world don't speak English. For us to do business with them, we need to communicate in their languages.
Enterprise Translation Server (ETS) from Transparent Language offers us a novel way to communicate with the world. ETS is a server-based tool for translating any text on the fly. (See "Turn It into Japanese" for information on iTranslator Enterprise, another translation tool.)
Instant Machine Translation
I've worked with several projects and products that are designed for a world-wide audience and discovered that there's a significant number of issues to resolve. Among them are character sets, calendars, formatting of dates and currencies, and the actual translation of text. But text translation is the starting point for any effective localization.
My standby method for solving this problem has always been a database approach.
