This article was originally written in English. Text in other languages is provided via machine translation.

We have an update on the Adobe Moses Tools which we announced on this blog on May 11.  The tools are now available in pre-built packages for Windows!  Check out the download section of the M4Loc site to get the Windows packages and for documentation and other information about the tools.

Please download the tools and let us know what you think!

–Raymond Flournoy
Senior Program Manager
Translation Technology Team

This article was originally written in English. Text in other languages is provided via machine translation.

 1.    Purpose of this document
This blog is an outcome of an extensive study undertaken to identify best practices in localization of Flash based content.

Localizing structured content through translation management tools (like SDL WorldServer) can be a simple process. However unstructured content like text appearing in Flash videos is not easy. To add to it, tracking the efficiency of the linguistics becomes all the more difficult for unstructured content.

The blog covers all aspect of Flash localization including creating the English content the right way; so that it becomes localization “friendly”. This should result in cost and time savings; which is multiplied by the number of target languages should yield sufficient dividends.

2.    Extraction of Text from a Flash animation

The difficulty of Flash animation localization depends on the globalization level of source – usually English Flash animations. During the localization process, all localizable text is extracted from the source animation, replaced by localized versions and localized strings are modified according to the style guides- including choice of font size, family etc. Occasionally localizable text is not included in the text layers but presented as graphics. Therefore the source animation has to be fixed in the first place to have it ready for localization. As a first step of Flash animation localization is to extract all localizable text from the animation. This is possible by using commercial tools such as “Flash Localization Tool” or renaming source .fla file to the .zip archive (just change extension from .fla to .zip) and extracting all .xml files from “LIBRARY” subfolder of the .zip. See Figure 1 and Figure 2 for more details.

Figure 1 – list of Flash archive with LIBRARY subfolder

Figure 2 – list of text layers in .xml format stored in the LIBRARY subfolder of a Flash archive

Flash native format is a zip archive with defined structure. Having a baisc knowledge of it enables one to easily extract all text layers from the animation. Once done, the only task remains to locate the text within the extracted .xml files and provide the translators with .ini file (if the translation is to be completed by using Trados CAT). Text layers in .xml files can be found surrounded by <characters>Your text</characters> XML tags.
The XML stores the information about font size, family and style (besides storing the localizable text). Most of this information like font family can be easily modified for all text if source font does not support the target language alphabet. For more details about Flash XML file please see Figure 8.

Best Practice # 1:
Never modify texts within text layers with help of action script. It will be difficult to understand script.

3.    Pseudo localization
“Pseudo localization” is a process to ensure the animation is ready for localization and all localizable texts is in the text layers only. During this process all strings currently contained in text layers (.xml files) are replaced by pre-defined string, e.g. by “X”. Original .xml files in the LIBRARY subfolder are replaced by modified ones and when this action is completed, render.swf should be played back in Flash player. By playing these renders it is possible to locate any remaining text which was not pseudo localized for various reasons.
Text originally present in the text layers is displayed as “X” in this render. In case there is still any readable text it usually comes from embedded video, graphics or an action script. One can find example of pseudo localization in Figure 3, Figure 4 and Figure 5.

Figure 3 – Example of pseudo localization. All strings except “What’s new” were changed to “X”. “What’s new” is a graphics in Flash animation and thus can’t be easily edited.

Figure 4 – Same screenshot as in Figure “3″ but now localized into Russian. As you can see also “What’s new” is correctly localized. In this case source was fixed and localizable graphical texts were updated to text layers.

Figure 5 – Another example of pseudo localization. Displayed asset is a screenshot from an application and the only editable text is in the upper right corner. In this specific case, it was decided NOT to fake it and leave it in English as the font size was too small

Best Practice # 2:
Apply Pseudo localization to find out any localizable text whichis not in text layers within Flash project. If your project has been globalized ever since the ideal way, pseudo localization can be skiped.

4.    Text layers in Flash animation
There are many ways to insert text into Flash animation. For example, avoid inserting graphical text (letters as graphical objects) and work with text layers only. If this is the case, DO NOT break text into multiple strings, and keep it in one string only, unless specifically required. Any separation in multiple substrings will result intext segmentation inside .xml file and can lead to loss of context during translation and thus incorrect localization of it’s substring.
In Figure 6 and Figure 7, one can find text “Loyal customers like you save with special upgrade pricing. Adobe Photoshop Elements & Adobe Premiere Elements is now a perfect 10!”
This sentence is separated into two different text layers. Such separation will result into segmentation of strings in the .xml file as well and translator will see them as two separated strings without any relationship between them, see Figure 8.

Figure 6 – “Loyal customers like you save with special upgrade pricing. Adobe Photoshop Elements & Adobe Premiere Elements is now a perfect 10!” text separation into two substrings. On this figure, the first part is visible.

Figure 7 – Second part of text “Loyal customers like you save with special upgrade pricing. Adobe Photoshop Elements & Adobe Premiere Elements is now a perfect 10!”

Figure 8 – Representation of substrings in the .xml file. Every substring is enclosed in the <DOMStaticText> tag inside .xml file.

It is not recommended to split a string into shorter substrings but rather keep them in one text layer whenever possible. Advantages of this approach are:
1.    Localized string is well ordered so that localized substrings do not need to be reviewed by native speaker after localization and postprocess.
2.    String is not divided into shorter substrings inside .xml file.
Today’s version of Flash allows authors to keep strings with different font family, color, style, size etc. in one text layer. Additionally, there is no need to separate them into several text layers. Keeping source strings in one text layer helps translators and localization engineers to spend less time on translation and post-processing of localized strings in the animation. It also decreases the chance of issues related to word order. In Figure 9 you can find example of complex string (part of the text is in yellow with bigger font) in one text layer.

Figure 9 – Complex string in one text layer only. There is no need to put text in yellow into a separate text layer. With today’s Flash you can create such complex strings.

Best Pratice #3:
Keep the number of text layers within Flash project as low as possible. If any text formatting is required, do it only one text layer (as much as possible).

5.    Embedded Videos
Many a times, Flash animations may contain embedded videos. These embedded videos can be easily found in Flash object library under “Embedded Video” type, please see Figure 10.
If there are any segments to be localized within embedded videos and only the render has been provided, it will be very difficult and time consuming to localize such strings. In special cases, when the video is carefully analyzed, some text can be “faked“ with small effort.
However, animated text (Figure 11) or static one with moving background is almost impossible to edit and in order to localize this type of source it is necessary to spend many hours to fake just one or two seconds of the final render. The source simply needs to be re-created which increases the effort manifold.
With editable video project file one can modify all text layers inside embedded video and prepare localized versions of those videos.

Figure 10 – Embedded video “soccer.flv” with animated localizable string

Figure 11 – Example of localizable text within the embedded video impossible to fake, text is animated

Best Practice #4:
Embedded videos with localizable texts within Flash project increase the time and effort for localization manifold.
The best way to do is extract all text from Video, localize it, replace all localizable texts and create localized render first. Without editable video file, the only (harrowing) option is to try to fake text within embedded video, which is usually impossible. So DO NOT embed text/assets in videos if you want to localize it. Provide assets and video separetely instead.

6.    Screenshot Animations
One can also create an animation inside the Flash project from a series of screenshots. See example of screenshots series in Figure 12 and Figure 13. Text in the screenshots are localizable ones and a source .psd with editable text layer needs to be created initially. Once completed and the text is replaced with a localized version, screenshooting of the localized series can be carried out.
If you have source editable .psd available, please provide it to your localization engineer. Moreover, text effects used in the localized Flash will be identical with those in the source Flash.

Figure 12 – Screenshot series. You can see both preview of the screenshot and also sequence of screenshots in the Flash timeline

Figure 13 – End of the screenshot series in the Flash animation. Text “The Big …” is animated within the series and every screenshot adds one letter of the text into the animation.

Best Practice#5: For any localizable text within a graphics (graphical text), it is important to provide source English assets. If source editable asset is not provided, it has to be re-created by localization vendor first to be able to replace text by a localized version and create render for Flash project. During re-creation of editable source asset some effects can be overseen and hence missed in localized version.

7.    Buttons & Active Layers
It is vital to keep all buttons with localizable texts as “Movie Clip” type in the Flash project and not to use mixture of different Flash types to simulate button functionality. If button functionality consists of more Flash types, it is very likely that during post processing, the  engineers may unintentionally use incorrect alignment of these objects in relation to each other inside certain frame. As a result, this will lead to a functional impact on the flash file, and in some cases, rending it corrupt
An example of corrupted button is described in Figure 14. Here the button consists of graphical text in the yellow box and active layer (shown as a blue frame) which plays role of “clickable” area. You may observe that the box is not aligned with active layer and the left side of this button will not be clickable. Additionally, right side contains an overlapped area which is active which is not correct.

Figure 14 – Corrupted button “What’s new”. Active layer (blue frame) is not aligned with yellow box.

Creating buttons as “Movie clip” will avoid similar issues in Flash animations. Sometimes, modification of assigned action script is required as well.

Best Practice #5:
Active layers outside of button in Flash can lead into misalignment within localized version of Flash. It requires once to resize button and active layer objects with every change in the no. of text characters in the button. Buttons created correctly eliminate potential misalignment risks and decrease the number of button re-sizings by a significant number.

8.    Flickering
In some Flash players, localized text can exhibit “Flickering“ effect i.e., text is moved by one or a few pixel to left, right, up or down when the cursor is hovered over it. See Figure 15 for more details.

Figure 15 – Flickering in detail – the image is composed from two screenshots of the same part re-captured after few seconds later to see one pixel position changes

The only way how to fix the „Flickering“ issue is to convert text layers within localized Flash project into curves and render into final format. Graphical text (curves) doesn’t show the “Flickering“ effect any more

Best Practice #6:
Flickering effect is visible in some players only. It is recommended to use Flash players without Flickering effect. Otherwise, localized text layers have to be converted into curves before rendering into final format. When multiplied by number of target languages, effort will turn out to be huge.

9. Acknowledgements/Credits

This document was prepared from an independent study done in Photoshop Elements 11 by Jakub Škrabal & Petr Knápek from Moravia, and Akulaa Agarwal & Manish Kanwal from Adobe.

Please note that it can be applied to any Adobe/Non Adobe projects requiring localization of text and other assets in Flash files. For any questions, please feel free to reach out to Akulaa Agarwal(akulaa@adobe.com) and Manish Kanwal (mkanwal@adobe.com).

This article was originally written in English. Text in other languages is provided via machine translation.

Digital publishing is a global business

Digital publishing is catching on worldwide, as international catalog, magazine and book publishers are increasingly producing digital versions of their publications, in an growing number of languages.

Adobe Digital Publishing Suite (DPS) offers digital publishers with the ability to create multilingual content for the enjoyment of their international readers. This article provides some basic information about the creation of multilingual publications with DPS.

Content localization: region-specific vs language-specific

Region-specific publications carry the main brand (of the magazine, retailer, etc), but are customized to an individual region or country. In the case of magazines, articles are written by local authors, often covering topics and people of local significance.

Language-specific publications translated versions of a single source of content. The articles and authors are the same, the only thing that changes is the language of the content.

Presenting the translated content

With language-specific publications, there are a few different ways to present the translated content, which can impact layout decisions.

The most common type of presentation is single-language, where each language version of the publication is downloadable as a separate application.

Multilingual applications can contain two or more sets of translations of the original content. The translations can be presented through toggling or side-by-side.
With the toggling approach, readers can navigate between content written in different languages by pressing a ‘language switch’.

The article toggling effect provides a smooth user experience, but it does require additional work (i.e. scripting) behind the scenes to make it happen.

The side-by-side approach puts the translations next to each other, typically with different font types, sizes and colors.

Authoring content in different languages

At the core of the DPS workflow is Adobe InDesign, which allows text authoring in many languages. The latest version of the product (CS6) is available in 3 flavors providing distinct levels of language support:

• InDesign CS 6.0 - Provides core typographical support for a wide range of languages, including those written in certain non-western scripts. It’s localized into English and 16 other European languages.
• InDesign CS 6.0 ‘CCJK’  - In addition to the core set of typographical features, provides typographical, layout grid and frame grid features for editing East Asian text. It’s localized into Chinese Simplified, Chinese Traditional, Japanese and Korean.
• InDesign CS 6.0 ‘ME’ - In addition to the core set of typographical features, this version provides full support for bi-directional languages such as Arabic, Hebrew, Farsi, and Urdu. Find out more about the Middle Eastern features here. The ME version is available in English and French user interfaces.

The linguistic capabilities of InDesign are well documented in the product’s help pages, and in articles written by various InDesign experts. Below are some language-specific topics that can assist in the creation of multilingual content in InDesign:

• Assigning  language to text
• Hyphenation and spelling
• Choosing the right fonts for multilingual documents (by Nicolás Carcáno, gpi)
• Specifying quotation marks per language
• Changing the sort order of indexes

Creating localizable content 

In multilingual digital publishing, a critical aspect of content authoring  - regardless of the language it’s originally written in – is to ensure that it’s localizable, i.e, that it can be easily adapted into (an)other language(s). Below are a few guidelines for creating localizable content in InDesign:

• Allow for text expansion - Word length varies considerably from one language to another. For example, German and Finnish sentences are on average longer than English. Also, Asian fonts require more vertical space than Latin fonts in order to render certain complex symbols clearly. Thus, it’s important to keep some buffer space around text so that translations can fit it nicely.
• Apply styles – It’s critical that all text formatting is based on styles, as it ensures consistent formatting across all languages, and it allows for easily changing fonts for languages whose characters are not supported by the font of the source document.
• Link images - Linked images are much easier to manage during translation
• Connect text frames – This will ensure text will continue to flow nicely after it’s translated.

More guidelines on content localizability with InDesign will be provided in a future post.

This article was originally written in English. Text in other languages is provided via machine translation.

I’d like to announce that AMT (Adobe Moses Tools) are at last open sourced and available for download.

All code and documentation has been submitted to M4LOC Moses for Localization.

http://code.google.com/p/m4loc/

Prepackaged DMGs for OSX users can be found here:

http://code.google.com/p/m4loc/downloads/list

Source code for those interested in building on the tools and improving them can be accessed here:

http://code.google.com/p/m4loc/source/checkout

I would be psyched to hear from folks who download and use the tools and are looking to improve them.  It’s been a long road from jumping into the deep end with Moses until where we are today.  There’s still plenty to get done.  Let’s work on building that together.

Cheers!

Jeff

This article was originally written in English. Text in other languages is provided via machine translation.

After much anticipation, Adobe Creative Cloud has launched!

http://creative.adobe.com

Creative Cloud is a membership service which provides online services for file sharing, collaboration, and publishing, as well as access to every Adobe Creative Suite 6 application.

Language availability

The Creative Cloud website itself is available in 8 languages: Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Spanish, and Swedish.

The Creative Cloud membership is available through the Adobe Store in: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxemburg, Malta, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, UK, and the US.

Creative Cloud members can download and install CS6 applications in any language in which the products are available. Unlike owning the traditional licensed version of a Creative Suite product, Creative Cloud membership allows you to select from multiple languages. For a complete list of languages in which CS6 applications are available, go here.

To learn more about the Creative Cloud

You can learn more about the Creative Cloud by watching 10 videos explaining common questions from installing apps, to sharing and moving files, etc. in the Creative Cloud YouTube channel (English only) and on Adobe TV (English only).

Also, you can learn more about what’s going on with the Creative Cloud by visiting the Creative Cloud Team blog (English only).

This article was originally written in English. Text in other languages is provided via machine translation.

TAUS Asia Translation Summit 2012 was organized by Translation Automation User Society (TAUS) in cooperation with China Center for Information Industry Development (CCID) and Translators Association of China (TAC). 80+ attendees from both product companies such as Adobe, Baidu, EMC, Google and Microsoft and LSPs participated in the summit held in Beijing on April 24 – 25, 2012, as well as the complimentary half day event TAUS Open Source Machine Translation Showcase held in the same venue on April 23. The summit provides attendees an excellent platform to share knowledge and experience in MT domain.

I was invited by TAUS to give audience an introduction of what Adobe has done on open source MT. In my presentation, I shared how Adobe makes use of the open source MT tool Moses in its localization workflow. We developed a set of tools called Moses Tool Set to simplify the usage of Moses. By using this tool, the training process of Moses can be done in an easier and intuitive way. It consists of 4 features: Corpus Clean Tool, Corpus Splitting Tool, Moses Training Harness, and Moses Scoring Harness. Each feature can not only work independently but be combined into a job which enables users to complete the whole training process in one click.

Many audience especially those from LSPs that just started their adventure of open source MT showed strong interest on the Moses Tool Set. It’s happy to see that seeking for ways to improve localization productivity is no more the responsibility only for the language service buyers. Some LSPs have also started their attempts in MT field. Moses is a good option for them because of its lower entrance cost. In the offline discussion, however, I got a lot of complaints from these potential Moses users about usage of Moses. For those who don’t dive deeply into statistical machine translation, Moses is too complicated to start with. Many parameters are required to generate a trained MT engine. Lack of a friendly user interface is another headache for them. No wonder the very first thing audience eager to know is where they can find and download Moses Tool Set.

Actually, Moses Tool Set is an open source project. Both its installer packages and source codes are available in Google Code.

This article was originally written in Portuguese. Text in other languages is provided via machine translation.

A Língua Portuguesa na Internet e no Mundo Digital patrocinado pelo Instituto Internacional da Língua Portuguesa (23-26 de abril de 2012).

This article was originally written in English. Text in other languages is provided via machine translation.

Probably the biggest misconception we encounter when talking with some colleagues from outside the Adobe Globalization team is that software “Globalization”, “Internationalization” and  ”Localization” all mean the same thing, and that thing is somehow related to something almost anyone can understand: Translation.

We can’t blame our colleagues for holding such misguided beliefs, as these terms have been used and abused for generations.

It probably doesn’t help that there are also terms in use such as “Culturalization”, “World-Readiness”,  ”Glocalization”, “Transliteration”, “Transcription”, “Localizability”,  and “Japanization”.

The fact that each of these have corresponding abbreviations (e.g. G11n, I18n, L10n, T9n, C13n,  L12y) and also different spellings (“Globalisation”, “Internationalisation”, “Localisation”, etc.) just helps make the whole thing more scary and confusing to civilians.

This article hopes to clarify these differences, and provide a better understanding of the various steps that make up  software globalization.

Clarifying the terminology

We’ll focus our explanations around a few key basic terms that generate the most confusion. One thing to be aware of is that although the meaning of some tasks such as ‘translation’ and ‘localization’ are standard across the industry, some other terms such as ‘globalization’ and ‘internationalization’ are not. The definitions provided here are the predominant ones (which we use at Adobe).

Internationalization (commonly abbreviated as I18n) is an engineering exercise focused on generalizing a product so that it can handle multiple languages, scripts and cultural conventions (currency, sorting rules, number and dates formats…) without the need for redesign. Internationalization, sometimes referred to as world-readiness, can be divided into two sets of activities: enablement and localizability.

Localization (L10N) is the process of adapting a product or service to a particular language, culture, and desired local “look-and-feel”. Translating the product’s user interface is just one step of the localization process. Resizing dialogs, buttons and palette tabs to accommodate longer translated strings is also part of localization.

Translation (T9N) is simply converting the meaning of text in one language into another. In a software product, the content that are translated are user interface, documentation, packaging and marketing collaterals. Most translation work is done by professionals, although in recent years, some companies started exploring the use of ‘community’-translation, and machine-translation.

Globalization (G11N) refers to a broad range of engineering and business development processes necessary to prepare and launch products and company activities globally. The globalization engineering activities are composed of internationalization and localization  while the business development activities focus on product management, financial, marketing and legal aspects.

World-Readiness is an equivalent term to Globalization, but it’s more often used in the context of internationalization.

How do they relate to each other

The simplified diagram below illustrates the relationship between the main globalization-related activities.

In summary, in the context of software:

Example of localization of an automobile user interface

Where the problem lies

So what is the impact of this ‘generalization’ of terminology to the software globalization process?

The main problem is that most product teams look at globalization as a single monolithic process that occurs sometime after design and implementation of the English product, and owned by a single team (the ‘Globalization’ team). This mindset encourages a “throw-over-the-wall” approach which often results in:

• Additional core engineering and testing effort to resolve critical internationalization issues found late in the schedule
• Additional localization engineering and testing effort to manually handle localizability issues
• Higher number of product defects
• Schedule delays
• Poorer customer experience

Using the automobile analogy in the previous section, a “throw-over-the-wall” approach would mean that, to adapt a Toyota Corolla designed for Japanese customers to the American market, engineers would need to move the engine or the suspension system in order to move the steering wheel and pedals from the right side to the left side of the car – an expensive and time-consuming operation.

Internationalization helps prevent this

The short story (key takeaways)

• Globalization, internationalization and localization are related but different activities, performed by different teams at different stages of product development
• Incorporate Globalization into your thinking as early as possible. Start during design. Ask yourself: which worldwide markets am I targeting in the short term and long term? What do these customers need? If you just think about today’s markets you will ignore globalization.
• Implement an internationalized product even if you don’t think you will sell outside the U.S. or to non-English-speaking customers, because this decision can easily change and then alterations will be very expensive. If your product is successul in one market, you will most likely have great business opportunities abroad. So, plan for it.
• Internationalization should be primarily performed by the product’s core engineering team. Do it once, do it right, then hand it over to localization.
• The localization process will be a lot easier and cheaper if the product is well-internationalized.

The most successful global corporations have instilled Globalization as part of all its employees’ “DNA”. In order for a company or product team to be successful internationally, there must first be a conscious decision from executives and the buy-in from everyone involved in the design and development of a software product to go international. This means that, unless the product and the entire infrastructure surrounding it are not ready to capitalize on the opportunities present in an international market, the global revenue potential of the product will never be fully achieved, or at a prohibitive cost only.

This article was originally written in English. Text in other languages is provided via machine translation.

Starting this month, we’ll publish a series of articles on  globalization myths.

If you’ve worked in the Globalization industry long enough, you’ve probably heard many of the myths we are going to describe.

If you’re new or from outside the industry, then we hope this series will help set the record straight.

The first article will be published soon. Stay tuned.