Any interface between humans and technology invariably involves software and language is almost always a key element of it.
In Wales, these software interfaces have typically just used the English language which is inconsistent with the aims of the Assembly to create a bilingual society where both Welsh and English have an equal status.
This situation is changing rapidly with many global software companies 'localising' their software to support the Welsh language and with companies such as ourselves providing bilingual software architectures and applications.
This is definitely a positive trend, though there are a number of challenges relating to consistency of approach and the quality and level of language support. For a software application to be fully bilingual, it's about far more than just being able to support parallel text, it affects everything from the architectural approach and data management through to sort orders and speech support.
Project Participants
As part of it's overall strategy for IT and the Welsh language, the Welsh Language Board commissioned us to author a standards document in order to provide a common and agreed understanding of what it means for software applications to be bilingual.
We were a logical choice for this work as our background in the development of bilingual software solutions and our work assisting companies such as Microsoft® in localising their software meant we had the breadth of experience, knowledge and capability to deliver a comprehensive and thorough document.
The standards document has now been released for public consultation across Wales. Though still in a draft form, it is already being recognised as a valuable and definitive resource to guide the development of bilingual software applications.
What's Covered?
The document provides both standards and guidelines, the standards defining the correct and approved means to provide bilingual support and the guidelines offering a more general discussion on best practice, approaches and issues to be overcome.
The content covers issues relating to localisation, character sets and alphabets, candidate architectures, user interfaces, system outputs (reports and emails), data management and storage, postal addresses and compliance with existing eGovernment standards.
Care has been taken to ensure that statements are sufficiently generic to cover a broad range of software architectures, technologies and functionality. This includes web based applications (even static web sites) where language selectors, domain names and email formats have specific coverage.
Compliant Software Solutions
Being commissioned to undertake this important work was no accident. We have a strong track record of expertise in language support and development of software solutions that support the Welsh language.
Our Infrastructure product provides a sophisticated architecture and development framework that includes a comprehensive set of functionality and capabilities to support the language. Though this is pretty much compliant already, we are currently working on a new version to be released this year that will be fully compliant with the standards. This will result in any solution that we develop and that is based upon this platform being automatically fully compliant and having the most advanced language support capabilities.
What Next?
The initial version of the standards has been published and is available on the Welsh Language Board website , along with the IT strategy for the Welsh language.
Since technology continually evolves, issues are resolved and experience in this field grows, future updates are likely and an informal consultation process will continue. If you have any comments on the standards, suggestions of what should be included or have any other feedback, please do get in touch.