Developing an understanding on how multi-lingual content needs to work on sil.org

Over the last few weeks I have been contemplating how multi-lingual content could work on sil.org. (I have had several helpful conversations to direct my thinking.)

As I understand the situation there is basically three ways which multi-lingual content could work.

First let me say that there is a difference between, multi-lingual content, multi-lingual taxonomies, and multi-lingual menu structures. We are talking about content here, not menu and navigation structures or taxonimies. Facebook has probably presented the best framework to date for utilizing on the power crowds to translate navigation structures. In just under two years they added over 70 languages to Facebook. However, Facebook has had some bumps along the way as DropBox points out in their post talking about their experience in translating their products and services.

  • Use a mechanism which shows all the available languages for content and highlights which ones are available to the user. Zotero has an implementation of this on their support forums.
    Zotero language options

    Zotero language options

  • Basically create a subsite for each language and then only show which pages have content in that language. Wikipedia does this. Wikipedia has a menu on the left side with links to articles with this same title in other languages. Only languages which have an article started in them on that title are shown in the menu.
    SIL International in English

    SIL International in English

    Other Pages in other languages may not show the same content.

    Other Pages in other languages may not show the same content.

  • Finally, create a cascading structure for each page or content area. So there is a primary language and a secondary language or a tertiary, or a quaternary language etc. based on the browser language of choice with country IP playing a secondary role. If there is no page for the primary language then the next in preference will show. This last option has been preferred by some because if an organization wants to present content to a user, then obviously, it would be in the users’ primary language. But if the content is not available in the primary language then the organization would want to still let the user know that the content exists in another language.

It would also be good to understand the concepts used in Drupal 7 (and Drupal 8) for multi-lingual content. There are several resources which I have found helpful:

  1. Localized and Multi-Lingual Content in Drupal 7
  2. Drupal 7’s new multilingual systems (part 4) – Node translation
  3. Drupal 7’s new multilingual systems compilation
  4. Drupal 8 Multilingual Initiative

It would appear that from this list of resources that Drupal’s default behavior is more in line with part two of the three examples given above.

Resources for Digitizing Audio as part of Archiving

I have been looking into some
http://www.indiana.edu/~medpres/documents/iub_media_preservation_survey_FINALwww.pdf
http://www.indiana.edu/~medpres/documents/iu_mpi_report_public.pdf
http://www.arsc-audio.org/etresources.html
http://www.ahds.ac.uk/creating/guides/audio-resources/GGP_Audio_8.4.htm

http://hcl.harvard.edu/libraries/loebmusic/aps/sound_directions.cfm
http://www.dlib.indiana.edu/projects/sounddirections/facet/downloads.shtml
http://preserve.harvard.edu/guidelines/audiodig.html

Presenting the Collection, the tape and the digital manifestation.

Presenting the Collection, the tape and the digital manifestation.

ProfDev Data Tracking

My wife has been tasked to be the Professional Development Coordinator for the company at which we work. Her task has several interesting things about in the area of data tracking. One question needing to be asked is: “what are the experiences and skills of our current employees?” This suggests that a databases with cross sections of professionally related events, people and skills is needed. These data then need to be able to be viewed by various stakeholders so that the data can be read and analyzed and understood; eventually to be acted upon and incorporated into company strategies for doing business.

One of the things that is obvious from the start is that a web based collection system is need for the data. A storage solution is also called for. And finally an web based analysis tool for presenting the data in a variety of manners for final use is needed.

So in an effort to help my wife out I have been looking a OpenSource implementations of Resume databases and CV building Databases. It has been my experience that when it comes to IT solutions that people need unique implementations and have unique criteria to meet but do not have unique problems. I think I even found a service that provides some professional development tracking called Onefile. But for our company it makes sense to approach this problem with an eye to integrate it with other corporate IT infrastructure, rather than silo it as an outsourced the system.

Summaries of Goals

This effort to take a strategic look a professional development of employees is part of an effort to look holistically at the corporation’s pool of human talent. The motivation is to be able to strategically deploy our skills in a manner where there is the largest return on investment. It is also important for us to be able to present our talented people and the products of their efforts to the world; both for credibility and for marketing.

Difficulties in the business world

There are quite a few legal challenges for companies (working in the U.S., Europe, and elsewhere) retaining these kinds of records, let alone sharing them with business partners.

Social networks are notorious for being able (if they are successful networks) pull information from users easily.

The data to be tracked

Facebook CV/Resume Creator apps

Easy CV Creator EasyCV Curriculum Vitae

Example YouTube video: httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egEadu5EUjI
CV Creative

Not popular…

My CV
Works with the http://moncv.com/ service.

Resume Factory

My Resume

1.5 of 5

Resume Central

Captain ResumeCaptain Resume
http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?ref=sgm&id=23892177864
3.5 of 5

LinkedIn:
Share it on facebook
http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=6394109615&ref=appd

Opensource stuff:
http://www.kite-eu.org/kite/en/download/
http://digitaldisruptions.org/rhizome/

http://www.margaperez.com/2009/08/resurfacing-the-kite-europass-cv-plug-in-for-wordpress/
http://digitaldisruptions.org/rhizome/2009/10/12/updating-the-application-profile-of-the-europass-cv-based-on-hr-xml-candidate-specifications-3-0/

http://digitaldisruptions.org/rhizome/2009/08/06/resurfacing-the-kite-europass-cv-plug-in-for-wordpress/comment-page-1/#comment-158
HR-XML:
http://www.sarmsoft.com/product/resumebuilder/

Plone:
http://plone.org/products/faculty-cv

Java:
http://gestcv.sourceforge.net/
http://sourceforge.net/projects/gestcv/
http://sourceforge.net/projects/lusid/

hResume:
Could not find a creator which worked

Conference Management
http://pkp.sfu.ca/?q=ocs
http://www.conftool.net/
http://sourceforge.net/projects/wcmt/
Conman
http://github.com/herlo/ConMan
http://blog.utos.org/2008/01/31/utosf-hacknight-a-grand-success/
http://conman.utosc.com/pages/home/
http://code.google.com/p/utos-conman/
registration
http://code.google.com/p/scalereg/

Coraga
http://corga.sourceforge.net/

Drupal conference registration
http://drupalmodules.com/module/conference

Social Network
http://www.boonex.com/dolphin/
http://www.patrick-opitz.com/projects/facelift/about/
http://www.xoops.org/ This is an open source social network which looks interesting but I am not sure how much momentum is behind it.

4.5 out of 5
This social network looks really cool and targets the e-portfolio
http://mahara.org/

Services:
http://en.easy-cv.com/

People Exist in Space and Time

The situation though is that everything that goes into a resume or a CV after biographical information is an event in which the person was involved, a skill they have or a resource they have helped to create. So if we could automatically pull information from the events and resources and then organize them according to Who then we would almost be there. (I am not sure how our company is tracking these kinds of information. It is most likely in a MS Word document.)

Events have several attributes one of those is time.

This is course management software: with calendars and DHTML in Video.
http://www.olat.org/website/en/html/about_features.html

NO CALENDAR….
http://www.davical.org/
http://www.bedework.org/bedework/update.do
http://trac.calendarserver.org/wiki/CalDAVTester

So How do we pull data from the container which holds our resources?
Well the container holding our resources is DSpace.
But these options work with wordpress….
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wikindx-macro-plug-in-for-wordpress/
http://wikindx.sourceforge.net/
http://refdb.sourceforge.net/features.html

http://simile.mit.edu/wiki/Citeline_Developer%27s_Guide
http://simile.mit.edu/wiki/Citeline_User%27s_Guide

Example resumes
http://matthewlevine.com/resume

Why do we need a Resume now that I have a Job?
http://optional.is/required/2010/02/01/have-gun-will-travel/