What are the features a translation tool for XML should have?
Some of the XML-specific features a translation tool that support XML documents should have are the following: • Support for all XML constructs (CDATA, namespace, NCRs, etc.). Avoid to write your own parser: using a standard public domain parser is the best way to ensure the tools will parse XML documents correctly. • Support localization directives in the XML document to translate. • Support the xml:lang attribute. If an element uses xml:lang to specify a language that is not the source language, do not offer to translate its content. When outputting the translated file, make sure all values of relevant xml:lang attributes are changed to the target language code. Make this support optional to allow for flexibility. • Make sure the mechanism to specify what elements/attributes are translatable allows to specify nodes rather than just elements/attributes, so the tool can address complex cases. A set of rules based on XPath expressions would be a good way to do this. • If possible, use a
