Implement basic multi-language annotations #1877

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opened 2013-09-24 12:29:11 +00:00 by rlx · 3 comments

rlx commented

2013-09-24 12:29:11 +00:00

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The main use case is visitors being able to turn specific languages on and off in annotations, including subtitles. "Basic" multi-language support does not mean storing multiple languages for all metadata on the backend, restricting global search to specific languages, or filtering clip list texts by language -- as all of this would degrade performance, and create additional complexity.

The implementation would be via language markup (inline HTML, + accessible vs. "Insert HTML..." dialog). The standard markup would be "some text, but lang attribute would be allowed in any tag. Based on these tags, the frontend can detect if an item has multiple languages, and in that case provide a menu (like the users menu) to turn specific languages on and off. (For now, this would be an ad-hoc setting, not a sticky preference.) Similarly, the video player would detect multiple languages, and allow setting the language in the existing menu.

The big advantage of this approach is that it allows for different uses: Multiple languages within the same annotation, multiple languages with identical annotation spans, or multiple languages with different spans -- i.e. there is no explicit "this is the same text in a different language" relation.

We'd need an additional site config setting for the default language (en).

The main use case is visitors being able to turn specific languages on and off in annotations, including subtitles. "Basic" multi-language support does *not* mean storing multiple languages for all metadata on the backend, restricting global search to specific languages, or filtering clip list texts by language -- as all of this would degrade performance, and create additional complexity. The implementation would be via language markup (inline HTML, + accessible vs. "Insert HTML..." dialog). The standard markup would be "<span lang="fr">some text</span>, but lang attribute would be allowed in any tag. Based on these tags, the frontend can detect if an item has multiple languages, and in that case provide a menu (like the users menu) to turn specific languages on and off. (For now, this would be an ad-hoc setting, not a sticky preference.) Similarly, the video player would detect multiple languages, and allow setting the language in the existing menu. The big advantage of this approach is that it allows for different uses: Multiple languages within the same annotation, multiple languages with identical annotation spans, or multiple languages with different spans -- i.e. there is no explicit "this is the same text in a different language" relation. We'd need an additional site config setting for the default language (en).