1st XLIFF International Symposium

“XLIFF's Place in the Community”

A community is a group sharing common characteristics and interests, perceiving itself as distinct from the larger society within which it exists. Ours is the Localization Community. It consists of many disciplines. In it we find Localization Service Providers, Translators, and Translation Agencies. We also find Toolmakers, Sellers, and Trainers. And our community features those in Academia, learning and teaching Localization. And of course we have Customers of Localization and Translation in our community.

XLIFF 1.2 was created by, and for, people from all of these disciplines.

XLIFF, the XML Localization Interchange File Format, is an open standard, created specifically to provide our community a standardized way to interchange localization files. Prior to its existence, community members needed to invent ad hoc ways. The challenge now, is for our community to abandon ad hoc methods, and to embrace the XLIFF open standard. The question is whether XLIFF is worthy.

This keynote presentation will illustrate how the XLIFF Technical Committee members leveraged the breadth of their skill, knowledge, and experience to create a simple-yet-powerful open standard - a single standard that serves each aspect of our community - a standard unburdened by superfluous overhead.

And finally, XLIFF must be more than a technically well-engineered open standard to genuinely serve our community. XLIFF must be embraced and utilized by our community. Attendees will be challenged to think about the success or failure of XLIFF 1.2 to engage our community. This question will be dealt with squarely in the presentation’s conclusion. Many opinions have been written and expressed. Which are dubious, and which have merit? And what‘s in store for XLIFF 2.0?