[
Lists Home |
Date Index |
Thread Index
]
A new OASIS technical committee is being formed. The OASIS Translation
Web Services Technical Committee has been proposed by the following
members of OASIS: Tony Jewtushenko, Oracle Ireland; Peter Reynolds,
Bowne Global Solutions; Bill Looby, IBM Ireland; Gerard Cattin des Bois,
Microsoft USA; and the following individual members: Paul Quigley and
Jaap van der Meer.
The proposal for a new TC meets the requirements of the OASIS TC Process
(see http://oasis-open.org/committees/process.shtml), and is appended to
this message. The proposal, which includes a statement of purpose, list
of deliverables, and proposed schedule, will constitute the TC's
charter. The TC Process allows these items to be clarified (revised) by
the TC members; such clarifications (revisions), as well as submissions
of technology for consideration by the TC and the beginning of technical
discussions, may occur no sooner than the TC's first meeting.
To become a member of this new TC you must 1) be an employee of an OASIS
member organization or an Individual member of OASIS; 2) notify the TC
chair, Peter Reynolds (Peter.Reynolds@bowneglobal.ie) of your intent to
participate at least 15 days prior to the first meeting; and 3) attend
the first meeting on 16 January. You should also subscribe to the TC's
mail list. Note that membership in OASIS TCs is by individual, and not
by organization. You must be eligible for participation at the time you
time you notify the chair.
The private mail list trans-ws@lists.oasis-open.org is for committee
discussions. TC members as well as any other interested OASIS members
should subscribe to the list by going to the mail list web page at
http://lists.oasis-open.org/ob/adm.pl, or by sending a message to
trans-ws-request@lists.oasis-open.org with the word "subscribe" as the
body of the message. (Note that subscribing to the mail list does not
make you a member of the TC; to become a member you must contact the TC
chair and attend the first meeting as described in the preceeding
paragraph.)
A public comment list will be available for the public to make comments
on the work of this TC; a message may be sent to the TC via the address
trans-ws-comment@lists.oasis-open.org.
The archives of both of these mail lists are visible to the public at
http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/
Additional information on this topic may be found on the Cover Pages at
http://xml.coverpages.org/tws.html "Translation Web Services (TWS)"
-Karl
=================================================================
Karl F. Best
Vice President, OASIS
+1 978.667.5115 x206
karl.best@oasis-open.org http://www.oasis-open.org
(i) Name of the TC:
Translation Web Services
(ii) Statement of purpose:
Many translation and localisation projects involve a multiple of complex
tasks carried out in different countries by different companies. The
management of this is a very complex business. Determining the cost of a
software localisation project involves sending files, data, and other
information to different companies to get information on their estimated
charges. As the project progresses a lot of time is spent by project
managers chasing up status information from the various vendors. Even
receiving the translated files can be cumbersome with the project
manager having to collect files from different ftp servers.
The need for ‘Joined-up localisation’ has long been a dream of many in
the translation industry. Why is it not possible to automate much of
these processes? Why can’t the Web be used to transfer data and
information effectively without contant human intervention? Why can’t
Project Managers see a project's status on a single screen regardless of
which vendor is used? However these efforts remained dreams as the
technology was not there to provide ‘Joined-up localisation’. Web
Services has changed that. By allowing computer to computer
communication over the Internet, automation of many localisation
processes is now possible. A publisher of software or documentation
could use Web Services to get not just one quote but multiple quotes for
different tasks and from different vendors. Web Services could be used
as the backbone to a workflow automating the links between the different
tasks that comprise a complex software localisation project. And
reporting project management information from a number of sources into
one consolidated screen at the customer’s computer is possible with the
aid of Web Services.
The Translation Web Services TC proposes to define a standard that
provides an encapsulation of all the information required to support the
following value proposition through the framework of the Web Services
intiative: "Any publisher of content to be translated should be able to
automatically connect to and use the services of any translation vendor,
over the internet, without any previous direct communication between the
two".
Web services connect tools and suppliers automatically without the need
for direct communication. Articles or sections from web sites will find
their way to the translator fully automatically. No phone
conversations, no faxes, no FTP, no emails (except perhaps automatically
generated emails). Translation memory matches will be retrieved fully
automatically from anywhere in the network. And for real-time
translation the web services architecture will fully automatically route
texts to a machine translation engine. No pre- and post-processing, no
translation folders and no so-called translation engineering. Web
services allow us to build the intelligence into the infrastructure, in
standard definitions that communicate openly with any tool and any
supplier that comply with the standard.
At the core of a localisation Web Service is the ability for publisher
to submit content that requires translation, request quotes for service
and/or request other services from vendors 1, 2 and 3 and for each
party to understand what the other is asking of them. To do this the,
metadata used within a localisation Web Service must be standardized and
publicly published. Therefore, a key objective of the Translation Web
Services TC will be to establish a set of business process terminology
that the software/content localisation and translation industries shall
find to be comprehensive and complete. For example it is possible that a
publisher would like a document translated and wants to use Web Services
to achieve this. One vendor could use the text ‘translation’ for the
translation task, another might use ‘trans’ another ‘trns’. The TWS
business process terminology specification will ensure that when a
publisher submits a document to be translated they use one set of
terminology that is universally understood by all vendors providing the
service.
In its simplest generic form, a Web Service is comprised of a service
application, a client application and a UDDI registry. An example of a
localisation web service application might be a service that provides
online translations. The interface to this application is opened over
the Internet using SOAP (Simple Application Access Protocol) and details
of the interface are published in a .WSDL (Web Services Definition
Language) file. This WSDL file is published to the UDDI registry. The
client application searches the UDDI for an appropriate service and
finds the published WSDL, which provides the publisher with information
about how to access the service over the Internet.
Web Services have recently become a popular and effective method for
distributing automated business processes over the Internet. However,
the benefit of Web Services is significantly minimized if a publisher
must rewrite their corporate Web Services in order to talk to new or
added localisation vendors who have their own incompatible Web Services.
The TWS TC is proposing to lead the software and content localisation
and translation to define industry standard business process terminology
which will then drive the development of an industry standard WSDL
file and UDDI businessservice entries.
The first phase of the workgroup will be to define the service types
that are relevent to the software/content localisation and translation
industry. These will be defined and published within a specification
with a public call for comment.
The second phase will be to define the service types in the first phase,
and describe them with service interface definition WSDL documents. This
will be done for each of the areas covered. For example human
translation services may have a separate WSDL to machine translation
services.
During the third phase, the WSDL documents will be published as UDDI
tModels with the overviewDoc field in each of these tModels pointing to
the relevant WSDL documents.
Relationship with XLIFF
The Translation Web Services TC is working within the same industry as
the OASIS XLIFF TC and it is hoped that there will be a close working
relationship between the two TCs. It is likely that XLIFF will be one of
the formats which is transported using Web Services based on the work of
the Translation Web Services TC but it will not be the only format and
the TC will not presume that XLIFF will be used.
(iii) Proposed list of deliverables, with projected dates:
- TwS 1.0 TWS Business Process Terminology Specification; 12 weeks after
1st meeting
- TwS 1.0 WSDL Documents; 20 weeks after 1st meeting
- TwS 1.0 UDDI Deploy WSDL as UDI tModels; 24 weeks after 1st meeting
(iv) Language in which the TC will conduct business:
U.K. English
(v) Date and time of the first meeting:
Thursday 16 January 2003; 16:00 GMT; Phone conference
(vi) Meeting schedule for the year following the formation of the TC, or
until the projected date of the final deliverable, whichever comes first:
Bi-weekly phone conference
(vii) Names, electronic mail addresses, and membership affiliations of
eligible people committed to the stated meeting schedule:
- Tony Jewtushenko, Tony.Jewtushenko@oracle.com, Oracle Corporation Ireland
- Peter Reynolds, Peter.Reynolds@bowneglobal.ie, Bowne Global Solutions
- Bill Looby, Bill_Looby@ie.ibm.com, IBM Ireland
- Gerard Cattin des Bois, gcatt@windows.microsoft.com, Microsoft USA
- Paul Quigley, paul.quigley@keyperformancesolutions.co, Individual Member
- Jaap van der Meer, jd.vandermeer@quicknet.nl, Individual Member
(viii) Name of the TC chair:
Peter Reynolds, Bowne Global Solutions
(ix) Names of phone meeting sponsors:
Tony Jewtushenko, Oracle
(x) Names of face-to-face meeting sponsors:
Peter Reynolds, Bowne Global Solutions
|
