JAXA Multi Lingual Study

Kengo Aizawa / JAXA

Masatoshi Kamei / RESTEC

WGISS-2015th September 2005

Kyiv, Ukraine

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Objective

• An objective of multi-lingualization is to provide the information on and the outputs from CEOS activities widely and clearly through the internet.

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Requirement

Multi-lingualized web sites should be;

• created and maintained efficiently, (by limited cost and workload)

• sustainable

• translated correctly

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Problems

Preliminary investigation revealed...• Pre-translated pages;

– offer good translation– need a lot of cost and workload to maintain.

• Dynamic translation services (e.g. Google) ;– easy for everyone to translate– Translated sentences often don’t make any sense– hard to translate technical terms

Besides...• Web sites in English make us (many of Japanese)

nervous (mental barrier).

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JAXA’s idea

• A hybrid service is effective to solve the problems.

The hybrid service will be composed of;– Pre-translated pages (Manual)– Dynamic translation services– Non-translation

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Hybrid Service (1/3)

• Pre-translated pages are suited for;– Top page

(important for the first visitors)– Terms of Reference

(frequent update is NOT necessary)– The other general information

(step by step)

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Hybrid Service (2/3)

• Dynamic translation services are suited for the pages that need frequent update such as– What’s new– Blog

NOTICE the visitors that the pages are translated automatically(to avoid misunderstandings)

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Hybrid Service (3/3)

• Non-translation service is suited for– Event information (calendar)

(date, place, organizer etc.)– Technical information

(hard to translate automatically)

Collection, translation and definition of the technical terms are useful. (A dictionary in the future)

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Technical Features

• The hybrid service will be available with html meta data tags (for classification).

– Pre-translated pages (Manual)– Dynamic translation services– Non-translation

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Pre-translated

Dynamic Translation

Non-translation

Example

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Next Step

• JAXA will make a prototype with one of CEOS websites and demonstrate it at WGISS-21

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Future issues

• For better Dynamic translation...– Make English sentences shorter and

simpler– Make a dictionary for the technical terms – Cooperate with Google?

(provide the dictionary)