Translating HTML Living Standard into Japanese

[momdo]

For my understanding of Web spec, I am willing to translate WHATWG's HTML Living Standard into Japanese language. Even though I see no hindrance to the plan as of now, I want to make sure that it is legally safe to translate the document and make the translation public under the public domain or a Creative Commons licence.

I would like to have your comment on my plan, especially about legal concerns.

[Hixie]

The license is the one mentioned in the HTML spec (near the bottom these days, I think).

Since translating the spec would be such a large and ongoing effort (the spec changes every day), I would recommend setting up a github repo to host the work and its community. Once the work is well underway I imagine we'd be able to host it on the whatwg site, if that's what you want.

[mathiasbynens]

The problem would be maintaining it. The spec is constantly changing, and you’d have to somehow keep up with all those changes or the translated version would be out of date.

[makotom]

As a supporter of him, I am not afraid of maintaining the translations. He has abundant experience on translating tech specs (as we can see from his current repository), although WHATWG HTML is updating notably faster than others. He even is able to stop translating them, clearly indicating that the translation could be obsolete, if it is too hard to track the latest spec. Still, I think that he desires a clear view on the legal aspect. Even though it should not be a question considering from the philosophy of web specs.

[annevk]

The license is mentioned in the document as @Hixie said. "Parts of this specification are © Copyright 2004-2014 Apple Inc., Mozilla Foundation, and Opera Software ASA. You are granted a license to use, reproduce and create derivative works of this document." As long as you mention that I think you should be fine.

[momdo]

Thank you for all replying. I'm going to start Japanese translation in my github repo by the end of this month.

[annevk]

Thank you for starting this! I know there is a huge community in Japan interested in HTML and I'm sure this would be of huge help to them.

[foolip]

@momdo, I don't know if you're interested, but one idea would be to begin with the https://developers.whatwg.org/ subset of the spec. That isn't currently up to date, but this could be an incentive to get it into shape.

An even more limited subset that could be defined by a similar mechanism, if that would help. Getting the infrastructure right seems critical for staying in sync.

[momdo]

@foolip

That sounds good. If it is possible to translate only a part of the specification, we can reduce the amount of work to be translated. However, it seems to me that there are some problems about cutting off the spec.

The biggest problem is that the developers.whatwg.org is stopped. I don't know detailed circumstances, but I guess that it can not continue to be updated for any reason. Then, in my view, it is difficult to determine the appropriate subset ranges. In the W3C HTML5 REC, the former HTML Working Group had decided these ranges by switching the style sheet, but was inaccurate and complex ones.

[foolip]

However, it seems to me that there are some problems about cutting off the spec.

Do you mean that the subset that becomes developer.whatwg.org isn't quite the right subset? That's almost certainly true, but wherever such problems are found, we can fix them by adding/removing annotations in the spec source. Or whatever mechanism you find would get the needed results, of course.

https://github.com/benschwarz/developers.whatwg.org/issues/104 is about getting it back in sync with the main spec.

I see in https://github.com/momdo/momdo.github.io/wiki that you've already translated parts of the W3C's HTML 5.0 and 5.1. Were these translations of static snapshots, or do you have any tools that you used to keep these in sync with a changing source? That kind of tooling seems critical to making this work. Curious to hear more about your plans!

[momdo]

I was a big misunderstanding... Browsing https://developers.whatwg.org/ in Firefox, it appears to be off-line (see screenshot). (IE and Chrome are OK. Due to my environment?)

By the way, I have used OmegaT to make and follow the latest translation. To translate the spec into Japanese language, running following steps (these steps seems to be primitive way):

1. Download the latest spec
2. (Processing the HTML for OmegaT, because OmegaT's HTML parser has some bugs.)
3. Translate changed sentences on OmegaT
4. Output translated HTML files
5. Push these HTML files to GitHub

[foolip]

Maybe that has something to do with appcache. If it seems like a bug in the page (and not Firefox) can you file an issue at https://github.com/benschwarz/developers.whatwg.org/issues/new?

[momdo]

Hmm... I try in another PC now, so it is confirmed to be able to display developers.whatwg.org normally. Since I don't know the exact steps to reproduce, I try to examine how to reproduce.

Apart from browsing issue, I will test a translation of the subset spec.

[momdo]

I have started Japanese translation of HTML standard on GitHub. http://momdo.github.io/html/

This initial translation is "a lot of hole". I'm going to continue to update translation.

Although my goal is to translate all description for web developers, source files of translation are full spec since Japanese readers would like to compare Japanese translation with original full spec.

[makotom]

Good luck!

[annevk]

@momdo cool! Please use https://momdo.github.io/html/ as URL. We'd like everything to be HTTPS.

[annevk]

@momdo if you would like you can host your HTML Standard translation project on GitHub whatwg/html-jp (and run it in Japanese). Once it reaches a state where it is worth publishing we could put it on https://html.spec.whatwg.org/translation/jp/ or some such (automatically published from whatwg/html-jp) and mention it in the HTML Standard.

[momdo]

I undestand https. When the translation of Japanese reaches a certain quority, I will welcome to be linked it from WHATWG HTML spec.

By the way, it seems to me that the source file has comments about "informative section" as but doesn't have the information about "for web developers" as markups.

Do editors have any plans about "for web developers" information on the full spec? (Or should I wait for developers.whatwg.org to restart?)

[annevk]

Generally everything annotated with w-nodev is only for implementers. We're not super consistent about this, but hopefully that will improve once developers.whatwg.org is restarted.

[momdo]

I get the point. I work while looking at w-nodev for a time. Thanks!

[domenic]

We should add translation links to the top of the document as we've done for other WHATWG specs. There are currently two HTML translations:

• @momdo's: https://momdo.github.io/html/
• @triple-underscore's: https://triple-underscore.github.io/ (search for "WHATWG HTML"; @triple-underscore, could you add an id="" to that <li> so we can link directly to it?)

Does anyone have suggestions on the format for such links? Presumably they would be another "colored box". Maybe we should have a wiki page that lists the translations, and the colored box can link there? "Translations" as the first line, "2 × 日本語" as the second line (updated if/when we get more)?

[makotom]

Do you mean that, currently, there is no explicit policy or procedure regarding references to translations of WHATWG documents?

Since I had been away from the worlds of standardization and translation for a long time (LOL), I am not quite sure whether there are such policies or not at WHATWG. But, from my view point, there should be a guideline for the composition of unofficial translations and the endorsements of them (i.e. reference to translations), for the purpose of encouraging translators to help better public understanding of the specs and of improving the quality of endorsed unofficial translations to avoid misunderstanding of the specs.

[annevk]

@makotom creating translations s largely self-organized at the moment. We do have various references to translations already, e.g. from https://dom.spec.whatwg.org/ and https://streams.spec.whatwg.org/. However, @domenic is asking as HTML has its list of references at the top formatted a little different from other WHATWG standards.

[makotom]

I understand that. This is why I am interested in the uniformed guideline for volunteer-based translations and references to them.

[annevk]

@makotom anything in particular you need? So far the process has been quite simple:

1. Translate a standard.
2. Communicate with the maintainers of that standard that you have done so, or get the maintainers to notice your translation.
3. Get the reference added to the main standard.

[makotom]

So, any material could be referred as a "non-normative" translation by the original spec, although feedbacks may correct improper references, right?

[annevk]

Yeah, if there's feedback that a translation is no longer maintained or improperly done, it would be removed. We should probably add this to the FAQ.

[triple-underscore]

could you add an id="" to that <li> so we can link directly to it?

I added permalink to it: https://triple-underscore.github.io/index.html#spec-list-html

[domenic]

I've added https://wiki.whatwg.org/wiki/FAQ#What_is_the_process_for_translating_WHATWG_standards.3F to the FAQ based on some of the discussion here, and will send a pull request to link to the two existing translations shortly.

[makotom]

@domenic Great! Many thanks!

[annevk]

Thanks @momdo and @triple-underscore for your translation work. It's now linked from the HTML Standard. And @makotom, thank you for making sure we document the process for any future translators. Really great to have this.

[momdo]

Thank you for linking to Japanese translation(s). I'm going to continue to translate the rest of the HTML standard for web developers.