Internationalization and Localization

The Text Encoding Initiative Guidelines have been widely adopted by projects and institutions in many countries in Europe, North America, and Asia, and are used for encoding texts in dozens of languages. The TEI community is broadly international and multilingual, and its geographical reach increases every year. However, the complex encoding of texts at which the TEI excels requires a close understanding of the available elements (numbering over 500), and non-English speakers are at a considerable disadvantage in learning and using the Guidelines. The TEI needs to be made more accessible to the international community it seeks to serve.

With generous financial assistance from the ALLC, the TEI began work to produce:

1. a working architecture for internationalization of the TEI source
2. internationalized stylesheets for delivery of the reference section of TEI guidelines
3. translations of the TEI reference documentation into six languages which the TEI considers to be the highest priority
4. a framework for coordinating further translation efforts to be undertaken on a volunteer basis, or to be supported by further funding if available.

For each language, the desc, gloss and remarks documentation elements for every class, element, macro, attribute and attribute value are being translated. In some cases localized and/or translated examples are being prepared. Localization strings for XSL stylesheets are largely complete.

Results are available as follows:

To volunteer to contribute translations and new examples for the Guidelines, please contact info@tei-c.org.