<abstract>This document defines an XMPP protocol extension for providing language translation facilities over XMPP. It supports human, machine, client-based, and server-based translations.</abstract>
<remark>Converted to XML format, cleaned up text, modified examples, changed pivotable and reviewed attributes to xs:boolean, corrected schema.</remark>
<remark>Changed xml:lang to destination, derived to derived_from; added service discovery identity.</remark>
</revision>
<revision>
<version>0.0.2</version>
<date>2005-12-28</date>
<initials>bf</initials>
<remark>Miscellaneous edits.</remark>
</revision>
<revision>
<version>0.0.1</version>
<date>2005-12-21</date>
<initials>bf</initials>
<remark>First draft.</remark>
</revision>
</header>
<section1topic='Introduction'anchor='intro'>
<p>There currently exists no standard for describing language translations over a text chat protocol. While numerous products and services exist to provide translation of text, there exists no standardized protocol extension for requesting a translation and expressing the details of the translation XMPP (see &rfc3920;). This document describes how to express a translation and its components in an XMPP message as well as a method to request translation.</p>
<p>Direct translation can be realized by either client-side translation before sending or transparent components translating messages on the fly. Discovering XMPP entities capable of translation allows for clients to request translation from them based on their capabilities. The remote XMPP entity could be either an automated translation service or a human providing translation.</p>
</section1>
<section1topic='Glossary'anchor='glossary'>
<tablecaption='Glossary'>
<tr><th>Term</th><th>Definition</th></tr>
<tr><td>Original Text</td><td>This is the message text that was originally created by the sender. This is the text that is translated.</td></tr>
<tr><td>Translated Text</td><td>This is the message text that has been translated by the language translation engines. This also called the destination text. For any given message there can be multiple destination text message bodies.</td></tr>
<tr><td>Pivot Language</td><td>Pivoting is the process of using one or more intermediate languages to translate from a given source language to a specific destination language. For example, if you needed to translate from English to Russian but only had translators that went from English to French and French to Russian then you could use French as a pivot language.</td></tr>
<tr><td>Pivot Text</td><td>This is the translated text of the original message in a pivot language. For any given destination language, there can be zero or more pivot text bodies. The ordering of pivoting is required to be specified for the destination language.</td></tr>
<tr><td>Language Translation Engine</td><td>Since not all language translation engines are the same quality it is important to some classes of users that they know what translation engine was used. It is equally important to also be able to select a specific translation engine for a given language pairing if more than one engine is available.</td></tr>
<tr><td>Language Translation Character Set</td><td>Some language translation engines can only translate text between languages if certain character sets (or code pages) are used.</td></tr>
<tr><td>Language Translation Dictionary</td><td> In order to enhance the accuracy of translation engines most support the concept of mission specific dictionaries.</td></tr>
</table>
</section1>
<section1topic='Requirements'anchor='reqs'>
<p>The protocol defined herein addresses the following requirements:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Enable an XMPP entity to request a translation from a remote XMPP entity.</p></li>
<li>
<p>Enable an XMPP entity to express the following mandatory elements of a translation for any receiving entities.</p>
<p>A message directly translated by the originating XMPP entity or a transparent XMPP entity delivered to a remote entity with only the required elements of source and destination language; this is the simplest case for a translation from one language to another. The source language is known because there is no <translation/> tag describing it. Three translation methods are supported by doing the following:</p>
<ol>
<li>If no 'engine' attribute is present, then manual (or human) translation was performed.</li>
<li>If an 'engine' attribute is present then machine (or automated) translation was performed, where the translation engine is identified by the value of the 'engine' attribute. If the 'engine' attribute is present its value is an empty string, then the name of the translation engine was not available.</li>
<li>If the 'engine' attribute and the 'reviewed' attribute are present, then machine translation was performed but the message text was reviewed and possibly modified by a human.</li>
<section3topic='Translation With Pivot'anchor='message-pivot'>
<p>A message translated by the originating XMPP entity or a transparent XMPP entity delivered to a remote entity with the pivot languages used to accomplish the translation. The source language is known because there is no <x/> translation tag describing it. When a translation is done via a pivot language, the pivot languages and their order of use MUST be specified.</p>
<examplecaption='Entity sends a message translated from French to Russian via English using human translators'><