Michael Guthrie, Open Repository Product Manager, presented this slide at the SPARC Digital Repositories Meeting 2010 in Baltimore.
It describes the journey Open Repository took to translate the interface of the WHO’s repository, into its six official languages including Arabic.
1. Managing Language Versions in DSpace 2 Step-by-Step Message Properties files from DSpace Import into TongueTied Export as Excel sheet Customize messages in a reference language Distribute to Language Version teams Import into TongueTied Export Message Properties files Deploy to DSpace 1 3 4 5 6 7 8 12/9/2010 1 www.openrepository.com
Editor's Notes
Due to United Nations mandates and World Health Assembly resolutions, the World Health Organization needed its Institutional Repository for Information Sharing (IRIS) to have the interface, and other aspects, available in the six official languages of the UN: Arabic, English, French, Spanish, Russian, and Chinese. Open Repository’s method:As DSpace uses a method of ascii encoded files for the interface labels, these needed to be managed in a tool that would interpret and convert to and from the encoding.We used a web-based open source tool called TongueTied to manage this process:1. Retrieve the message properties files from DSpace2. Import into Tongue-tied3. Export as Excel sheet4.Customize messages/labels in a primary reference language, in this case English and Spanish were both used5.Distribute to Language Version globally distributed teams the 1500 labels and re-assemble in Excel.6.Import into Tongue-tied7.Export the ascii encoded message properties files8.Deploy back to DSpace. (Here on the slide you see the English and Arabic versions) More information about this process and other aspects of multilingualism such as BabelMeSH and Authority Control integration, are available from Open Repository. You can also see it in action at www.who.int/iris.