One of the
challenges in adapting programs to work with different languages is
message formatting. This is the process of formatting and inserting
data values into messages in the user’s language. For example, “The
package will arrive at
{time} on
{date}” could be
translated into German as “Das Paket wird am
{date} um
{time}
geliefert”, and the particular
{time} and
{date}
variables would be automatically formatted for German, and inserted
in the right places.
The Unicode Consortium has provided message formatting for some time
via the ICU programming libraries and CLDR locale data repository.
But until now we have not had a syntax for localizable message
strings standardized by Unicode. Furthermore, the current ICU
MessageFormat is relatively complex for existing operations, such as
plural forms, and it does not scale well to other language
properties, such as gender and inflections.
The Unicode CLDR Technical Committee is formalizing a new working
group to develop a technical specification for message format that
addresses these issues. That working group is called the Message
Format Working Group and is chaired by Romulo Cintra from CaixaBank.
Other participants currently represented are Amazon, Dropbox,
Facebook, Google, IBM, Mozilla, OpenJSF, and Paypal.
For information on how to get involved, visit the working group’s
GitHub page:
https://github.com/unicode-org/message-format-wg
Open discussions will take place on GitHub, and written notes will
be posted after every meeting.