The Theory and Practice of PseudoTranslation

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The Theory and Practice of Pseudo-Translation
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About this Presentation

• Addison Phillips
• Internationalization Architect, Yahoo!
• Introduce Pseudo-Translation, its uses and
  several methods of implementation.

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Whats Pseudo-Translation?

• Convert text (typically English ASCII text) to
  non-random non-ASCII.
• Typically to test a product for localizability
  before actual translations are ready.

key, display string dialogTitle, Dialog
Title aMessage, This is a message.
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What is it good for?

• Testing localizability
• makes hard-coded strings visible
• makes problems with resources and resource
  formats visible
• makes layout problems emanating from
  length/height/font changes visible
• Does anybody really do that any more?

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Testing Software

• Its also good for functional QA
• generate data in non-ASCII encodings
• generate non-ASCII data
• generate test cases from ASCII

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Your Mission

• Pseudo-translate text to support localizability
  and other test purposes using general purpose
  code.

• Easy to deploy and customize
• Support functional, encoding, and localizability
  testing

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Anatomy of a Pseudo-Translation
Source String
DNT Identifier

• MSG012Translate me.
• _at__at__at_Tràñslátè mé.

Translated String
Pre-pend
Post-pend
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More Anatomy
Identifier Inclusion
Boundary Marking

• MSG012Traanslaatee Mee

Vowel/Letter Doubling
Inclusion
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Interesting Boundary-Marking Patterns

• This is a concatenated string.
• This is a message-formatted string.

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Types of Pseudo-Translation

• Algorithmic Translation
• Maps code points using ASCII Math
• Mapped Translation
• Maps code points using a table
• Random Translation
• Maps code points at random
• Simulated Encoding
• Generate encoding-based test string
• Auto-magic Translation
• See graphic
• More?

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Algorithmic

• The most common example zenkaku ASCII
• abcd abcd
• U0061 U0062 U0063 U0064
• UFF41 UFF42 UFF43 UFF44
• Add 0xFEE0 to ASCII!
• Produces strings that are visibly ASCII but
  structurally multi-byte (in SJIS or UTF-8 for
  example)
• Produces characters that are kind of chubby,
  tests Asian font support, and stresses
  layout/spacing

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Mapped

• Convert characters using a mapping table
• e - é
• Produces strings that are non-ASCII and exercise
  casing, sorting, encoding, display, and other
  capabilities of the software, but are still
  recognizably English
• Often used with vowel doubling or pre/post-fixing
  to simulate text swell.

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Mapping Rotation

• Single character-character mappings produce
  predictable results. Same string
  pseudo-translates the same way every time.
• Character rotation replaces one character with
  different characters so that the same string is
  rarely the same twice.
• Exercises assumptions in the code about strings
  having to match.

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Rotation Frequency

• Using variable length replacement lists helps
  ensure pseudo-strings arent the same
• Do more than just the vowels. Do consonants too!

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Random

• Replace one character with a random character
• Exercises a larger range of Unicode or the target
  encoding.
• But produces strings that are never legible.

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Simulated Encoding

• QA projects frequently require globs of text that
  exercise a particular character encoding.
• You could download some from the Web but how to
  you know if the encoding is correct
  through-and-through? How can you exercise the
  full range of the encoding, including rare
  characters?
• Replace an ASCII text buffer with a similarly
  sized and structured text in a given encoding (or
  using a given character repertoire).

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Auto-Magical

• Use a machine translation Web service or tool to
  make text in a given language.
• Babelfish, for example
• Produces texts that are (usually, mostly, sorta)
  in the target language.

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Funkadelic
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An Approach to Pseudo-Translation

• I used Java for this.
• Three main components
• Expose text for translation
• Perform translations
• Manage translation process
• Probably could have used ICU Transliterator
  classes for this but probably wouldnt have
  learned as much

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Expose Text

• ITextProvider
• An interface exposes only the translatable bits
  of text. (Not every character in your
  properties/JSON/XLIFF/message catalog should be
  pseudo-translated).
• Implementers extend this interface for their
  specific file format or input source.
• So I dont have to provide a parser for every
  format.
• Provides for segmentation of text into
  translation units

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Manage Translation

• TranslatorProvider
• Implemented as a Service Provider Interface
  (SPI)
• Loads the various translation classes, including
  those developed by users separate from the
  pseudo-translation library
• Provides a consistent interface to the
  translation process
• and I dont have to provide every possible
  Translator class

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Translate Stuff

• Translator
• an abstract class that defines the translation
  process.
• AbstractPseudoTranslator
• a convenience class that adds specific features
  unique to pseudo-translation, such as pre- and
  postpending strings.

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Why SPIs?

• Provide users with the ability to create their
  own classes and integrate without a re-compile.
• Who do I mean by users?
• Mostly QA folks. Integration of
  Pseudo-translation with automated test harnesses.

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Summary

• And a couple of Live Demos, since I dont learn
  quickly

http//images.search.yahoo.com/search/images?pliv
edemoseiUTF-8frsfpxwrt
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PseudoTranslator Demo
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QA

• Presentation available (soon) at
• http//www.inter-locale.com