Guidelines on HTML markup

Validate and check your documents using suitable software. Errors in HTML markup, even if they cause no visible problems when the document is viewed on some browser, may cause unpredictable results in automatic translation, especially in the future when programs utilize the structural information conveyed by HTML markup.

Use logical markup instead of abusing HTML elements to achieve a desired physical effect. For example, if you use the H1 element just to have a paragraph presented in very large font, a translation program may assume it is 1st level heading (since that's what H1 really means); this might imply that when translating from French to English, all words except a few small words will have capital initial according to what is common usage in headings in English!

Specify the LANG attribute at least for the entire document and for major parts (such as block quotations) within it if they are in another language. (This currently seems to have no effect on Babelfish, but in the long run such markup is crucial for good translation.)

When you need to use a word or phrase which is probably not found in normal dictionaries, provide a link to a definition. This probably won't help the translation process, but it may help people who read your text either translated or as such. For example, for computer-related jargon you can often find suitable definitions in some of the Internet glossaries. See example below.

Use suitable markup to designate expressions which should not be translated despite looking like words in the source language. There is currently no good markup for this, but as an interim solution to this problem for Babelfish, you could use the SAMP element. For example, to prevent Babelfish from translating the abbreviation "HUT" into something that means a hut in the target language, you could write <SAMP>HUT</SAMP>. A drawback is that the text will then appear in monospaced font on most browsers, but by using style sheets you can suggest that it be rendered in a normal font.

For textual information, use normal text instead of images with text embedded into them. This applies to navigational "panels", too.

Use tables (TABLE elements) instead of preformatted text (PRE element) for tabular material. If you "line up" things using preformatted text, the lining up is almost certainly lost in translation. (In fact, Babelfish seems to screw up preformatted blocks rather badly.)

When setting up a link, try to make sure that the link text is a phrase that can be reasonably translated as a single entity. The same applies to text level markup such as emphasis. For example, if you emphasize a preposition (as in

it is not <EM>on</EM> the table
       but <EM>under</EM> it

) there will be difficulties when translating to a language where suffixes are used for things expressed by prepositions in English. (A human translator might be able to find a suitable circumlocution.)

Use entities for characters outside the Ascii repertoire, e.g. ö instead of ö (o dieresis, or o umlaut), especially for characters which do not belong to the normal alphabet of the main language of the document. (This can be rather inconvenient, but it may help to circumvent a bug in Babelfish.)

An example of linking to an entry in a special dictionary when using a word which may cause problems to translation programs (and even human translators or human readers of the original text):


There is a <A HREF=
"http://wagner.princeton.edu/foldoc/cgi-script?action=Search%3A&amp;query=workaround"
TITLE="a description of the word 'workaround'">workaround</A>
to this problem.

This looks like the following on your current browser:

There is a workaround to this problem.

Interestingly, using Babelfish, the link gets converted to a link thru Babelfish, so the reader of the translated document, when following the link, will get a translated version of the dictionary entry! This is often - probably most often - very nice, but how can you write a link which does not get translated that way, for example a definite link to the original in English?