Multi-lingual Forms and Applications

There are currently several different practices for presenting forms
to a multi-lingual audience.

One of the mechanisms that can be used is Content Negotation as
described in the HTTP specification. This allows the user-agent to
send along with the request for a resource a list of (natural)
languages that are acceptable (amongst other things).

Unfortunately, this mechanism is often ignored by servers, most
notably by Google, who prefer to use the sender's IP address to decide
which language to use (much to the annoyance, it might be said, of
users who do use the HTTP mechanism). One of the reasons that they may
have chosen not to use HTTP content negotiation is that browsers are
often not properly set up to include the user's list of languages, and
most users don't even know that it is possible to give your language
preferences, let alone how to set those preferences up. 

A technique used by authors who don't have the resources to map IP
addresses to languages is to include buttons or links on the page to
other language versions of the page. This however can prove to be an
administrative nightmare, not only for ensuring that the translations
are kept up-to-date with changes in the wording, but that the
different pages are kept up to date with changes in the layout and
presentation.

This talk will describe the use of XForms to simplify the
administration of multi-lingual forms. A number of approaches are
possible, using generic features of XForms, that allow there to be one
form, with all the text centralised separate from the form
itself. This can be compared to how style sheets allow styling to be
centralised away from a page, and allow one page to have several
styling; the XForms techniques can provide a sort of Language-Sheet
facility.