Supporting Multilingual Paths over the WWW

Transcription

1 Supporting Multilingual Paths over the WWW Unmil P. Karadkar, Luis Francisco-Revilla, Richard Furuta, Frank M. Shipman III, Avital Arora Center for the Study of Digital Libraries and Department of Computer Science Texas A&M University College Station, TX USA {unmil, l0f0954, furuta, shipman, Abstract Walden s Paths is a Web-based implementation of trails. It facilitates the use of Web documents in K-12 classrooms by allowing teachers to contextualize Web-based information to best suit their curricular goals. With the rapid spread of the Web to countries that speak different languages, there is a need to provide multilingual support for Walden s Paths. In this paper we discuss the issues that must be considered while providing this support and present a prototype version of the path server that supports three languages. Introduction The spread of computers around the world has opened up new markets for software developers. Many software vendors must now design their software for use in different parts of the world, by people who speak different languages and have different cultures. The issues in internationalization and localization of software have been well documented [Russo 1993, del Galdo 1996, Kokkotos 1997]. The World-Wide Web (also referred to as the WWW or the Web) brings different cultures and countries closer together in an unprecedented way. It facilitates computing in a truly global sense, in that it is now possible to transfer messages across the globe in a matter of seconds or use computing resources located anywhere in the world. This implies that developers of Web sites must consider internationalization issues and design Web pages that cater to culturally diverse audience. Nielsen has addressed the issue of designing Web sites targeted at an international audience [Nielsen 2000]. The discussion of internationalization issues and the advantages of global reach have influenced the design on many corporate Web sites. The Web sites of CNN, Yahoo!, BBC, Amazon and Lufthansa Airlines are some that offer information in multiple languages to their visitors. While professional software developers and service providers have been quick to adopt multilingual interfaces, it is difficult to find parallels in educational software. Vannevar Bush, in 1945, proposed the concept of trails as a means to associate and communicate information items that are semantically related but physically scattered in a hypertextual web [Bush 1945]. Since then, trails have been implemented in various hypermedia systems, for example, in Guided Tours and TableTops [Trigg 1988], in NoteCards [Halasz 1987] and in Scripted Paths [Zellweger 1989]. Walden s Paths ( is a Web-based implementation of a path mechanism. In its present form, the Web cannot be considered as a digital library. It lacks the crucial services like cataloging and collection development [Levy 1995]. In the absence of editors, librarians and publishers, users of the Web are deprived of guidance to trustworthy material [Wiederhold 1995]. Walden s Paths provides a service that helps in reformulating Web-based material into a Digital Library context. Authors of paths add metadata to Web-based information in order to contextualize it. The humangenerated metadata enhances the value of the document collection when used in conjunction with automatically generated metadata as it describes materials in terms of their expected usage instead of characterizing them based only on the terms they contain. It also aids resource discovery at the collection and sub-collection level and is useful for recording within-collection organization [Marshall 1998]. The authors of paths are usually persons with some domain knowledge and material annotated by them can be expected to have a sense of authority. [Schatz 1996] defines federation as mapping together similar objects from different collections. Paths aid in federation of Web materials as they usually contain documents from different Web sites and hence different sources and collections. In this paper, we discuss issues involved in the internationalization of Walden s Paths, a Web-based educational software package. While much of the discussion focuses on issues involving K-12 education, Walden s Paths can be used as a tool to federate WWW materials, providing library services over the WWW.

2 Figure 1: The Walden s Paths Start Page Section 2 briefly describes Walden s Paths. Section 3 outlines the architecture for internationalization of Walden s Paths. We discuss the features supported by a multilingual version of Walden s Paths in Section 4. In Section 5 we highlight some unresolved issues and present our plan for future work. The final section provides a general discussion and concluding remarks. 1 Walden s Paths Walden s Paths can be accessed from any standard Web browser that supports frames and JavaScript. Paths are linear, directed, network-based metadocuments. A path is essentially a collection of Web documents that are to be traversed in the order of their appearance. In general, the author of a path is not the author of the Web documents that the path contains. Walden s Paths was developed for use as an educational aid in K-12 classrooms to help teachers achieve their curricular goals. Most information on the Web is not oriented towards young audiences and hence it must be contextualized before it is used in the classroom. The author of the path (usually the teacher) can do so by adding HTML annotations to the pages on the paths and by providing a higher-level abstract for the entire path. For a detailed description of issues and experiences with Walden s Paths, refer to [Shipman 1996, Furuta 1997, Shipman 1998]. Viewers select a path to traverse from the list of paths presented to them as shown in Figure 1. Figure 2 illustrates the typical browser window during a Walden s Paths session. The window is divided into three frames. The bottom frame, called the Content Figure 2: The Walden s Paths Interface Frame, displays the original page as the user would see it when viewed outside the Walden s Paths interface. The top-right frame, called the Annotation Frame is where the author s annotations to the current page are displayed. These annotations may contextualize, elucidate or analyze the information in the Content Frame. An annotation may highlight a focal point for the viewers, provide pointers to related resources or pose questions regarding the page displayed below. The top-left frame, called the Control Frame, displays the widgets that the viewer uses to navigate along the path. The reader may click on the left and right arrows to move along the path or on the numbered images to jump to a particular page on the path. A click on the lettered icon i displays an overview of the path and information about the author if it is available. Clicking on the image labeled as Walden s Paths brings up the start page again. The Control Frame also contains a link to the original URL of the page in the Content Frame and the user can follow it to view the page without the Walden s Paths interface. While navigating along the path, the reader is free to follow any of the links on the page being viewed. The new page is now displayed in the Content Frame and a Return to Path icon replaces the widgets in the Control Frame. The reader may follow any number of links and be at ease in the knowledge that a single click will return him to the point where he veered off the path. 2 System Architecture Figure 3 illustrates the architecture of Walden s Paths. This Figure displays the author as well as the reader perspective of the system. Readers access Walden s Paths through the Path Server, which is implemented as

3 Reader Browser Path Server HTTP Server Path Publisher Publish Paths Language Selector Control Widgets Fonts Local Paths Save/Load Paths PathAuthor Browser Author Published Paths P 1 P 2 P n L 1 L 2 L 2 L 1 L 3 L 4 Figure 3: Architecture of Walden s Paths a CGI program. When the reader selects a path to view, the Path Server selects the path in the appropriate language and loads the Control Widgets, Fonts and the path from the database of published paths. As the reader requests a page on the path, the Path Server reads the URL, retrieves the page from the HTTP server that contains it and displays it in the Content Frame. Path creation is a two-step process [Karadkar 2000]. It enables the authoring of paths in the absence of a network connection, provided authors already know which URLs they want to include in a path. The authored path can then be published when a network connection is available. This scheme allows authors to create paths from their home or while they are traveling. The author first creates a path on the local file system using the PathAuthor, which is a networkindependent tool that supports multilingual annotations. The paths that are stored locally must be uploaded to a Web server before the readers can access them. This process is called publishing. The author publishes a path using the PathPublisher, another CGI program. During the authoring process, the author may also act as the reader in order to view the path created by him. 3 System Features in Support of Internationalization The PathAuthor 1 allows authors to create paths and store them on their local file systems. It currently supports three languages: English (the default language), Hindi (the national language of India) and Spanish. A snapshot taken during the creation of a path is shown in Figure 4. The left part of the PathAuthor interface displays information about the path as a whole. It contains the title of the path and provides a listing of all the pages in the path. While the title for a page may be different in each language, the PathAuthor currently displays the title for the English version of each page only. The author may also provide a different path title for each language. The order of pages in a path can be altered using the Shift Up and Shift Down buttons. The right side of the interface displays information about individual pages in the path. More specifically, it 1 This section provides a short introduction to the PathAuthor and the PathPublisher. For a detailed description of these tools and a preliminary evaluation, see [Karadkar 2000].

4 displays the details of the page that has been selected in the list of pages on the left. For every page on the path, the author provides the title, URL, annotation and caching preferences. If the author wishes to make the page available in multiple languages, he must provide these fields for each language that the path supports. The right part of the interface also contains buttons for adding pages to the path, deleting the page that is currently displayed and for viewing other pages in the path. The Undo Changes button reverts all changes made to the current version of the page since it was displayed. The PathAuthor supports the standard New, Open and Save features. The author may provide his contact details, a brief abstract and an expiration date for the path (displayed when the reader selects the i icon) for display. The path shown in Figure 4 contains titles, pages and annotations in all three languages. In this Figure the path title is displayed in Hindi and the page details are displayed in Spanish in order to present the maximum features. Also notice that ñ character in Spanish is written as its HTML equivalent, ñ, as the Annotation field actually accepts HTML input. This path is called a master path as it is conceptually a path that contains pages in all languages. This path serves as a model for creating individual paths in each of the languages. The master path must be split into paths for every language that it supports before it can be viewed via the Walden s Paths server. The relationship between the master path and a path generated from it for a particular language is analogous to that between a Class and an Object (an instantiation of a Class) in Object- Oriented Programming. Paths for different languages are generated from the master path that serves as a conceptual and semantic model for the paths. The PathPublisher generates individual paths for each supported language from the master path automatically at the time of publishing the path. Figure 5 displays the interface of the PathPublisher. The PathPublisher requires user authentication to ensure that no one but Figure 4: Walden s PathAuthor

5 the author can tamper with his/her published paths. Once the author successfully logs in, he is free to add or delete paths. The published version of a path cannot be modified. The author must edit the path locally, delete the published version of the path, and then republish the modified path. While this method may seem cumbersome it ensures that different paths generated from a master path remain synchronized. Additionally, this reduces the processing required by the path server. However, it does make switching between different versions of a path awkward. It may happen that parallels for a certain page on the path may not be available in all languages. However, the page must be included in all paths to maintain the sequence and flow of the narrative. The PathAuthor handles such situations by the use of a default language. When the paths are generated, any missing pages for path in a certain language are substituted with a parallel page in the default language. Currently the PathAuthor treats the pages in English as the default pages. Figures 6 and 7 display an example of pages on the Travel India path. The fourth page on the both the paths refers to Sanchi, the location of some of the oldest Buddhist Stupas. Figure 6 shows the 4 th page in the Hindi version of the path, which points to a Hindi page. Figure 7 points to the Spanish version of the path. The Travel India path did not have a page in the Spanish version, so during the creation of this path, the system included the page from the English version (the annotation is in English). The language in the Control Frame points to the fact that the path being viewed is in Spanish. The main page of the Walden s Paths server (shown in Figure 1) allows readers to view paths that have been authored in the various languages that it supports. Thus, clicking on the link titled Español displays the interface in Spanish and lists all paths that are available in Spanish. The link labeled Create Virtual Directories allows readers to group paths that satisfy certain criteria using a search mechanism. Figure 5: Walden s PathPublisher

6 Figure 6: Hindi Page on Sanchi Figure 7: Spanish Page on Sanchi

7 4 Issues and Future Work The current support provided for viewing paths in multiple languages is by no means complete. Several issues still remain in providing a complete multilingual experience to the authors and the readers of Walden s Paths. While readers can view the paths in their native language, the author still must know English, as the interface of the PathAuthor currently is available only in one language. For an internationalized version of Walden s Paths, the interface of the PathAuthor must be converted to the various languages that it supports using the various internationalization and localization techniques suggested in [Russo 1993, del Galdo 1996]. The PathPublisher also must support multiple languages and must accept input in these languages in order to provide complete multilingual support. While this feature is already supported for European languages, it is essential that this support be extended to languages that use non-european scripts. Finding the required information is a crucial aspect of path creation. Currently, most of the information on the Web is available in English. Finding information on different topics turned out to be an exercise in patience, perseverance and hope. However, we expect this task to be easier in the future due to the increasing multilingual support provided by various Web search engines. AltaVista [AltaVista 2000] and Google [Google 2000] also allow users to search for Web pages in specific languages. This is a very useful feature for authors who would like to find languagespecific pages. In some cases, pages in certain languages simply do not exist. This issue can also be handled to some extent by AltaVista, which allows all the pages returned in response to a search to be translated between most European languages. While the translation is not perfect, it is good enough to provide the readers with a general idea of the contents of the page. This is a good start, but the issue of translating to non-phonetic languages like Chinese still remains to be resolved. As the Walden s Path Server supports authoring in more languages, the various interface issues must also be considered. The PathAuthor must allow authors to choose the specific languages that they would like to create paths in, instead of displaying all languages that it supports. However, an individual author may not know all the languages that they want to author paths in. For example, a teacher may want to author paths in English and Spanish, the two dominant languages in the southern United States. However, if the teacher does not know Spanish, he must acquire help from someone who does. Consequently, the PathAuthor must support collaborative authoring. If the teacher first authors the path in the language that he knows best and passes on the path for translation to a colleague, for ease of translation the colleague must be able to view the annotations in at least two languages in parallel. It is also essential to provide a text editor that will convert text entered by the author to HTML transparently to the author. Recall the example shown in Figure 4. An editor that allows the HTML source view as well as the document view and can convert text typed in both these formats to display in the other will help reduce the authors tribulations. In some cases, teachers may want to use the default URL for a page that is not available in a native language along with an annotation in the native language. They must be allowed to incorporate the default page in different versions of the paths without providing the URL repeatedly. Another possible complication can arise due to the various dialects of a language. The use of English terms in Australia, England and the United States is significantly different. However, people from these countries can communicate without problem, as most of the grammar and the words are identical. There are other languages where the dialects differ so that it is almost impossible to communicate across dialects. For example, the Hindi language, as spoken in different states of India, varies drastically with respect to the usage of words and grammar. Readers must be provided with an option to switch languages at any point on a path. A reader who is viewing page 4 of the Hindi version (Figure 6) of the Travel India path must be allowed to shift to the Spanish (Figure 7) or the English versions so that they may compare the pages and choose which page provides them with the best information. This feature may be useful for multilingual readers. If the pages on the parallel paths are direct translations, the users can read a path in a language they have mastered and attempt to learn a language they barely know about by viewing corresponding pages on parallel paths. Walden s Paths has long advocated controlled exploratory learning [Shipman 1996]; this feature expands the method across languages. While the new interfaces and the multilingual paths are being developed, their usability must be assessed through evaluation by subjects from the target population, that is, the K-12 students and their teachers. The students can help evaluate the modifications to the path server, while the teachers can evaluate the authoring tools.

8 Conclusion The current implementation provides a baseline for further development of multilingual support for Walden s Paths, which is expected to culminate in a fully internationalized version. The support for multilingual paths will allow teachers from around the world to incorporate Walden s Paths into their classroom teaching and teach the students in their native language. With the increasing focus on internationalization for the Web and the development of Web pages in multiple languages, the potential of paths in education could be fully exploited in the near future. On a broader level, the support for multilingual paths will help authors from around the world contextualize and annotate Web-based information in their native languages to suit various purposes. The provision for federating Web documents and adding metadata will incorporate some library-like features over the WWW in addition to the existing automatic indexing services that the Web search engines offer. Paths created by reputed or knowledgeable authors may bestow some legitimacy on the information that they annotate. If the Web provides the services that meet the expectations of patrons of a present day libraries, it has the potential to be the global digital library of the future. Acknowledgments This material is based upon work that was supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant Nos. IIS and DUE and by the Office of the Vice President for Research and Associate Provost for Graduate Studies, through the Interdisciplinary Research Initiatives Program, Texas A&M University. References AltaVista Help FAQ Bush, V As We May Think. The Atlantic Monthly, August 1945, pp del Galdo, E. and Nielsen, J. (Editors) 1996 International User Interfaces. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York, USA. Furuta, R., Shipman, F., Marshall, C., Brenner, D. and Hsieh, H Hypertext Paths and the World-Wide Web: Experiences with Walden s Paths. Proceedings of Hypertext 97: the Eighth ACM Conference on Hypertext, Southampton, U.K., pp Google Halasz, F., Moran, T. and Trigg, R Notecards in a Nutshell. Proceedings of the ACM CHI+GI Conference 1987, Toronto, Canada, pp Karadkar, U., Francisco-Revilla, L., Furuta, R., Hsieh, H. and Shipman, F Evolution of the Walden s Paths Authoring Tools. to appear in Proceedings of WebNet 2000, San Antonio, USA. Kokkots, S. and Spyropoulos, C.D An architecture for designing internationalized software. Proceedings of Software Technology and Engineering Practice, Eighth IEEE International Workshop on incorporating Computer Aided Software Engineering, Athens, Greece, pp Levy, D. and Marshall, C Going Digital: A Look At Assumptions Underlying Digital Libraries. Communications of the ACM, 38/4, pp Marshal1, C Making Metadata: A Study of Metadata Creation for a Mixed Physical-digital Collection. Proceedings of Digital Libraries 98, Pittsburgh, USA, pp Nielsen, J Designing Web Usability: The Practice of Simplicity. New Riders Publishing, Indianapolis, USA. Russo, P. and Boor, S How Fluent is Your Interface? Designing for International Users. In Proceedings of INTERCHI 93, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, pp Schatz, B. and Chen, S Building Large-Scale Digital Libraries, IEEE Computer 29/5, pp Shipman, F., Marshall, C., Furuta, R., Brenner, D., Hsieh, H. and Kumar, V Creating Educational Guided Paths over the World-Wide Web. Proceedings of ED-TELECOM 96, Boston, USA, pp Shipman, F., Furuta, R., Brenner, D., Chung, C. and Hsieh, H Using Paths in the Classroom: Experiences and Adaptations. Proceedings of Hypertext '98, Pittsburgh, USA, pp Trigg, R Guided Tours and Tabletops: Tools for Communicating in a Hypertext Environment. ACM Transactions on Office Information Systems 6/4, pp Wiederhold, G Digital libraries, value, and productivity. Communications of the ACM 38/4, pp Zellweger, P Scripted Documents: A Hypertext Path Mechanism. Proceedings of Hypertext '89, New York, USA, pp. 1-26