W3C: Weird Proceeding with WCAG Conformance Translations
Jens Meiert, January 17, 2007 / June 16, 2008.
This entry is filed under Web Development, Accessibility.
Years ago, the W3C or its WCAG Working Group, respectively, published a set of documents concerning “Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 Conformance Logos”. And sometimes, volunteers do translate W3C documents. Here is what Roberto Scano and I experienced during the last three years:
- December 11, 2003:
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Roberto announces to translate “W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 Conformance Logos” into Italian.
- December 11, 2003, minutes later:
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Jumping on the bandwagon, announcing German translations.
- December 22, 2003:
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Information on the availability of the German translations, while Roberto already finished the Italian translations:
I ask one of you please to put these files to the
/WAIfolder since they include the unchanged markup of the original files and only make sense in this location (also affects Robertos files, I guess). [sic] - January 4, 2005:
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First (?) reminder to the W3C translators list:
Once again: About 13 months ago (yes, it’s been in pale 2003) Roberto
[…]and me[…](references include all relevant information) translated all WAI conformance pages into Italian and German, and nothing happened yet, they still ain’t in use. - August 31, 2005:
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Next notification, sent to W3C’s Shadi Abou-Zahra:
21 months ago
[…], Roberto Scano and me translated the WCAG conformance pages into German and Italian, respectively. Is there any new status available regarding the integration of these translations?Response:
[…]We will be looking into serving these pages via content negotiations and will get back to you soon. - November 13, 2006:
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Latest email to the translators list which apparently caused a misunderstanding:
The translations that you (and others) have provided are published on the W3C translations database following the procedure for W3C translations
[…]In fact, Ivan Herman added Roberto’s and my translations to the W3C database months or even years ago, which is usually perfect (it gives more freedom to improve the corresponding code; just compare the code of both original and translated main document …). But in this case, parallel publications have been and still are intended since in this part of their website, the W3C uses content negotiation, and otherwise, none of their visitors would benefit from the alternative localizations.
I’m very excited what’s coming next. In December, 2007, I’ll certainly write another reminder.
However: The translation related collaboration with the W3C usually works very well (especially with Ivan), and all of my other German translations have been published without any problems – only the WCAG documents just don’t make it. I also need to add that I’m not “angry” about these incidents, I rather find them, well, funny. To cite Roberto:
Our children will see them online
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Comments
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On January 20, 2007, 12:18 CET, Massimiliano Navacchia said:
We will see wcag2 before wcag1 full translations…
… wonderful!
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On January 20, 2007, 23:01 CET, Rob said:
When is the happy event for Roberto, that I didn’t know he was becoming a father?
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On January 20, 2007, 23:15 CET, Jens Meiert said:
Massimiliano – right, hopefully, that doesn’t hold true …
Rob – I don’t know (either)? Is he?
