Multilinguality and Electronic Commerce
Aarno Lehtola
VTT Information Technology *
P.O.Box 1201, FIN - 02044 VTT, FINLAND
Tel: +358 0 456 6032   Fax: +358 0 456 6027
Email: aarno.lehtola@vtt.fi

	Introduction - electronic commerce, multilingual s/w
	Constructing internationalised software
	- OsiCon EDIFACT software as an example
	Research issues in multilingual electronic commerce
*) More information on VTT:  http://www.vtt.fi/
Introduction
•	Liberation of International Trade
•	EDI in ever wider use in bilateral trade transactions
•	Electronic trading points becoming more common:
•	the Nordic electric power stock exchange
•	Even electronically handled open competitive bids coming:
•	Public Procurement in Europe, 600 GECU/year, 16 M enterprises, up to 500.000 purhasing entities, EC projects TAPPE and ELPRO
•	Support for local language still very important 
Parties in a Bargaining Process

Phases in a Bargaining Process
•	Investigation:
•	buyer specifies its needs, conducts market analysis, evaluates previous purchases
•	seller disperses information, analyses market situation, keeps up to date with calls for bids
•	Competitive bid / negotiation:
•	buyer announces competitive bid, selects most suitable supplier, negotiates bilaterally
•	seller analyses calls for bids, prepares bids, negotiates and collects more information from the buyer, negotiates bilaterally
•	Closing the contract and the business transaction:
•	may involve also carriers, customs, forwarding agencies, banks ...
•	after care and follow up services important
An Example of EDI Based Competitive Bid

Terminology
LOCALISATION (L10N)
Localisation refers to the activities performed to modify a software to meet the needs specific to different locale(s) than the software was originally developed for.
INTERNATIONALISATION (I18N)
During internationalisation software is (re)constructed so that it can be localised with relatively small effort.
GLOBALISATION
Internationalisation + Localisation.
Localisation without Internationalising

Localisation without first doing internationalisationcan cause considerable production delays and extra work due to the need to restructure the whole software.
		
Localisation of Internationalised Software

In internationalised software  parts needing localisation have been detached from locale independent parts.
		
Globalisation Variations - 1

Localisation Variations - 2

Process Improvement in Globalisation

Internationalisation/Localisation Process

Engineering Internationalized Software
A simplified software engineering process for internationalisation contains the following activities:
•	specification, including gathering internationalisation requirements
•	designing software with internationalisation solutions
•	implementing software applying internationalisation technologies
•	adapting data and documentation to be easily localised
•	validation and quality assurance
Categories for Internationalisation and Localisation Requirements
External Internal	Linguistic aspects	Cultural aspects	Local practices	
Data and documentation	-	Language of data
-	Language of documents	-	Cultural differences within data
-	Training principles and examples	-	Differences in locale practices within data
-	Local practices for product documents	
User interaction	-	Language of UI
-	Input and output methods for script systems
-	Fonts	-	Layout of UI
-	Symbols in UI (text, images, colours, sounds)
-	Presentation of numeric data
-	Units of measure	-	Control of UI (terms, mnemonics & accelerators)	
Data 
encoding	-	Character encoding
-	Font libraries	-	Numbers
-	Calendar	-	Date and time	
Software construction	-	Structure of application (the structure of core and other components)
-	Software services (operating system support and other support software)	
Hardware devices	-	Internationalisation aspects of support software for hardware device access	

A Framework for Global Software (FGS) - 1
•	Derived in the Glossasoft project of EC to illustrate a way to construct truly internationalised software.

FGS  Principles

1.	Internationalised application consists of an application kernel that has been designed in locale independent manner.
2.	The application can use internationalised external services via internationalised service protocols (= application programming interfaces = APIs)
3.	Protocols let parameterise locale specific behaviour using LocaleContext structures
4.	Data structures made locale conscious
OsiCon Component Software - 1

•	Open system architecture and ready software components to be used for building message based applications
•	Application domains:
		•	Message Based Information Services
		•	Collection and Delivery of Data
		•	Front Offices
		•	EDI Based Trade Transactions
		•	Message Based Communication
			between Information Systems
OsiCon Component Software - 2
•	Current component categories:
		•	Application and User Interfaces
		•	Representation Translators
		•	Communication Front Ends
•	Currently used by Tieto Group, one of the largest data processing service corporations in the Nordic countries, in its service products for public administration
•	For further information on OsiCon, please contact:
	VTT Information Technology, Tor Lillqvist (tel. +358 0 456 6061, email: Tor.Lillqvist@vtt.fi) or Aarno Lehtola (tel. +358 0 456 6032, email: Aarno.Lehtola@vtt.fi)
OsiCon - Multiple platforms and Multiple Languages

OsiCon Components - Present and Future

Multilinguality in OsiCon Form

•	Internationalisation in three levels:
		•	GUI controls,
		•	form layouts and texts, and
		•	form data.
•	Support for multiple platforms.
•	Ability to dynamically switch the locale of a form.
•	An active application must simultaneously apply different locales in different windows with respect to the locales of the forms.
Research Issues in Multilingual Electronic Commerce 
•	The need for multilinguality support varies in different phases of the bargaining process. Examples of tasks with multilingual scope follows:
•	Investigation phase:
	A.1	supply of multilingual product information by suppliers
	A.2	market analysis covering suppliers/buyers in different 	locales
	A.3	accessing information on products/suppliers in different 	locales
	A.4	following calls for bids issued in different locales
	...
•	Competitive bid / negotiation:
	B.1	multilingual access to information on locale specific
		business rules/legislation
	B.2	contract models in native languages (tailored, standard)
	B.3	messaging in the negotiating (may need language
		translation)
	...
•	Closing the transaction, after care:
	C.1	providing multilingual access to the audit trail of the
		events in the transaction (e.g. checking money transfers 	afterwards, customer account information Ö)
	C.2	multilingual access of information on the assisting
		parties (banks, carriers etc.) in the transaction
	...
What is needed for multilingual electronic commerce?
•	Homogeneous systems architecture with open interfaces to enable and maximise interworking of distributedly developed (locale specific) program components.
•	Some particular domain of commerce for which to have a pilot project:	
•	Standardisation
More Information on S/W Internationalisation
•	Introduction in hypertext form (Toolbook presentation for MS Windows 3.0 or later) can be downloaded from ftp site ftp.vtt.fi via anonymous login. The directory is /pub/projects/globalsw
•	Results from EC project Glossasoft on S/W internationalisation and localisation will be soon published in book format:
			Hall and Hudson (eds.): Software sans Frontieres.
			John Wiley & Sons. Publishing Company, 1996
•	Selected reports of Glossasoft project in hypertext format. Please, ask Tuula K‰pyl‰ (VTT Information Technology, email: tuula.kapyla@vtt.fi, fax: +358 0 456 6027)
Whom to Contact at VTT ?
•	Modelling of interorganisational transactions:
			Dr. Jari Veijalainen	(email: jari.veijalainen@vtt.fi
									tel: +358 0 456 6014)
•	Software internationalisation and localisation:
			Mr. Aarno Lehtola	(email: aarno.lehtola@vtt.fi
									tel: +358 0 456 6032)
•	OsiCon EDIFACT product:
  			Mr. Tor Lillqvist		(email: tor.lillqvist@vtt.fi
									tel: +358 0 456 6061)