Can automotive organizations leverage DITA’s support for multilingual content delivery?

November 10, 2023
|By Bryan Tipper

Leveraging DITA’s support for multilingual content delivery is a valuable capability for automotive organizations aiming to reach a global audience and provide technical documentation in multiple languages. DITA’s structured approach to content creation and management facilitates the creation of content that is easily translatable and maintainable across different languages.

Localization Attributes

DITA allows content creators to use attributes to mark content that needs translation. Common attributes like “xml:lang” can be applied to elements to specify the language of the content. This helps translation tools identify which parts of the content require translation and ensures that the right translations are applied to the correct sections. For example, a paragraph in English may have the attribute “xml:lang=’en'” to indicate its language, making it clear that it should be translated for other target languages.

Language-Specific Variants

Another useful feature of DITA is the ability to create language-specific variants of content. This means that you can have different versions of a document for different languages while still maintaining a single source of truth. Language-specific variants allow you to tailor content to the linguistic and cultural nuances of each target audience. For example, instructions in a user manual may vary slightly between an English version and a Spanish version to better address the needs of each language group.

Example:

Here’s an example of how DITA can handle language-specific variants:


<topic id="engine_maintenance">
  <title>Engine Maintenance</title>
  <body>
    <section xml_lang="en">
      <p>Regularly change the oil in your vehicle's engine.</p>
    </section>
    <section xml_lang="es">
      <p>Cambie regularmente el aceite del motor de su vehículo.</p>
    </section>
  </body>

In this example, there are language-specific sections for English and Spanish. This approach allows for precise translation and localization of content for different language audiences while maintaining a unified document structure.