Internationalization Tag Set

The Internationalization Tag Set (ITS) is a set of attributes and elements designed to provide internationalization and localization support in XML documents.

The ITS specification identifies concepts (called "ITS data categories") which are important for internationalization and localization. It also defines implementations of these concepts through a set of elements and attributes grouped in the ITS namespace. XML developers can use this namespace to integrate internationalization features directly into their own XML schemas and documents.

ITS v1.0 includes seven data categories:

The vocabulary is designed to work on two different fronts: First by providing markup usable directly in the XML documents. Secondly, by offering a way to indicate if there are parts of a given markup that correspond to some of the ITS data categories and should be treated as such by ITS processors.

ITS applies to both new document types as well as existing ones. It also applies to both markups without any internationalization features as well as the class of documents already supporting some internationalization or localization-related functions.

ITS can be specified using global rules and local rules.

In the following ITS markup example, the elements and attributes with the its prefix are part of the ITS namespace. The its:rules element lists the different rules to apply to this file. There is one its:translateRule rule that indicates that any content inside the head element should not be translated.

The its:translate attributes used in some elements are utilised to override the global rule. Here, to make translatable the content of title and to make non-translatable the text "faux pas".

In the following ITS markup example, the its:locNote element specifies that any node corresponding to the XPath expression "//msg/data" has an associated note. The location of that note is expressed by the locNotePointer attribute, which holds a relative XPath expression pointing to the node where the note is, here ="../notes".

Note also the use of the its:translate attribute to mark the notes elements as non-translatable.

ITS does not have a solution to all XML internationalization and localization issues.

One reason is that version 1.0 does not have data categories for everything. For example, there is currently no way to indicate a relation source/target in bilingual files where some parts of a document store the source text and some other parts the corresponding translation.

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