Thread: Bidi content

Ever wondered how to treat bold typed or underlined text?

Here's a screen shot that shows text in a section title level that will give you the answer:



Boldtype-underline.jpg

With this one, we kill two birds with the same stone!

Check location of bullets (a mirror image of a LTR language) and the closing question marks (the only ones used in Arabic, same as in English)...



Bullets_question-marks.jpg

Here's a frequent mistake when graphic designers are not Arabic-native, misplacement of the percentage symbol.

Please, take a look at the correct way it needs to show (with no spacing in between figures and symbols).



Percentage.jpg

With regard to the management of links, everyone knows how disturbing it gets no matter what direction the text flows. In general, keep in mind the same rules that apply for LTR; that is, try to avoid breaking URLs in different lines.

One way to avoid this, and that certainly reflects a good internationalization effort by the content development team, is to have "vanity" URLs; that is, a nice-looking short URL with a hyperlink that may be miles long.

However, and with longer URLs, whenever possible you need to use specially line breaks to make them fit all in one line. In Bidi content, if they break, and even though the flow of the cursor and the hyperlink may work well, it does not look good in the target language. Take a look at the couple of examples from the screenshot below.



Links.jpg

An important point when internationalizing (preparing) the source file for a RTL target language is to avoid the use of non-breaking spaces. Don't let words get tied up and give yourself room to play with the target text to get the expected layout.

Look what a potential hazard these non-breaking spaces look like:



Non-breaking spaces.jpg

So far, it's been all about Arabic. But, what happens with other RTL? Let's start with Urdu as there are some slight differences.

In this brochure about influenza you can see how the flu virus serotypes are treated the same (even like LTR languages). Piece o'cake! But, remember to use the BiDi "hidden" marks.



Urdu_H5N1.jpg

Let's carry on with Urdu. Although I still need to confirm, I believe the same applies at least for Arabic.

This brochure below shows how two years (whether consecutive or defining a stint) are paired together. It's interesting to see that, even you can go above to find about the treatment of two figures paired one after the other, for years you still follow the LTR flow.



Urdu_years.jpg

Just a quick parenthesis to confirm what has been said for arabic. I was handling an arabic translation yesterday where it said "10:00-10:30AM" . It was translated (by a native) as "10:30 - 10:00" (with the LTR reading direction). Hence, The order of the group numbers is inverted too. Memsource manages to respect this, so PMs shouldn't worry about that.