• use the service in a language and script of their choice, both for input and output
• work on their own national or cultural environment
• switch between different languages and scripts.

Anything less than this hampers productive work and effective communication. To accomplish this, MAITS defines four levels of Transparent Language Processing (TLP):

0. Codeset Conversion. At this level, the accessed data is converted to the character sets usable by the client platform so that they can be visible to the user.

1. Transliteration and Cultural String Formatting. At Level-1, language-sensitive transliteration is added to allow access to data encoded in different scripts (e.g. accessing Greek or Cyrillic from a French workstation). Correct cultural formatting of date / time, numeric, and currency fields occurs here.

2. Translation Memory. Level-2 TLP adds the ability for an application to query a stored pool of context-sensitive translated words and phrases to build up language specific keywords, attributes fields, and basic error messages.

3. Machine Translation. Level-3 TLP includes parallel machine translation of body text for first-cut approximations of textual content for the end-user.

User Community

MAITS intends to create a low-level API (Application Programming Interface) to enhance existing standards for globalisation. As such, the user community is expected to be quite large, encompassing virtually all European users of X.400 and internet electronic mail services, X.500 directory services, and WWW (World Wide Web) information access. In addition, the API is expected to be used by independent software vendors (ISVs) for international product offerings. Sybase and NEXOR as partners, intend to include MAITS in their product line. IBM, HP, Software AG, Dunn and Bradstreet Software, The British Library and The European Union Document Publishing Office (OPCE) have all shown a strong interest in incorporating MAITS in their development efforts. The following international standards efforts can be considered users of MAITS: CEN TC 304, the European Locales and the European subset of ISO / IEC 10646, ISO / IEC JTC1 SC2, ISO / IEC JTC1 SC22 WG 20 and WG15, POSIX Locales, and ISO / IEC SC37 working on transliteration and transcription for Cyrillic and Greek.

Market Situation

The market is over ripe in anticipation for an integrated globalisation solution such as MAITS. With the increase in cross- national commerce, the growth of EU organisation entities, and the explosion of the use of telematic services (such as WWW, e-mail, and commercial services such as EuropeOnline and CompuServe) by non-English speaking users, a very strong demand has been shown for tools and software that enhance a native speaker's use of the InfoBahn. The key to MAITS is that it takes a unified solution and spreads it across several widely accepted standards to increase the ability of sharing data between heterogeneous multilingual data with users in multiple locales simultaneously. Webcore, INRIA, CENT / TC304 and other groups have already shown a high degree of interest in MAITS. A study will be done to estimate the size of the potential market for MAITS-enabled software.

Project Objectives

The objects of MAITS are to:

• create specifications for Level 0 to Level 3 TLP as an enhancement to the C Programming Language
• implement a C-language API for Level 0 to Level 2
• publish a standard set of guidelines for using MAITS in global multilingual distributed applications
• enhance X.400, X.500, exmh, WWW and Sybase to use Level 0 to Level 2 TLP
• do a feasibility study and small demonstration of Level 3 TLP
• publicly demonstrate and exploit MAITS with a number of interested partners in multiple languages in multiple countries
• participate on standards bodies to encourage MAITS to be included in the C programming language, X.400, X.500, internet, SQL, CORBA, and the WWW standards.

Technology base

The existing core technology exists, but in different, non-standardized forms. the C programming language has the concept of "locales", with X/Open recommendations for further changes for distributed processing. Transliteration is a design feature of the "C3" conversion engine. Codeset conversion is already an integral part of Alis Technologies and Sybase products. And machine translation packages exists for many language pairs and many platform environments.

MAITS aims to integrate these many disparate technologies in an integrated, unified whole, to enable the standards bodies that influence the ultimate content and format of telematic services for global multilingual distributed environments.

Progress and results

The expected result of the MAITS project is a greater degree of communication between users of different languages, and a greater degree of openness to data in different geographic locations, different encodings, different scripts, and different languages.

The MAITS project deliverables are:

• Extensions to the C Programming Language to support Transparent Language Processing
• Standard Guidelines for use of the MAITS API and protocol enhancements needed to communicate gloabalised information from each application in order to effectively maintain a transparent language environment.
• X.400 with MAITS enhancements
• X.500 with MAITS enhancements
• exmh internet mail tool with MAITS enhancements
• WWW Web Server and Browser with MAITS enhancements
• Level 3 TLP feasibility study and demonstration

Exploitation

Commercial X400, X.500, a WWW Web Browser, and client/server application development tools will be created and marketed as a result of the MAITS research and development. It is expected that the standards resulting from MAITS will become widely accepted in the standards and TS communities.

Two user groups will be established: one from the service operators and the other from the end users. In the service operator group the following bodies will take part: DKnet from Denmark, UNINET from Norway, DFN from Germany, ARNES from Slovenia, GARR from Italy, and EUnet covering several European countries. This service providers group is expected to provide input in the validation phase and testing. The end user group which is expected to be set up after the validation and testing will take part in the demonstration stage. Here, the following organizations will take part: University of Klagenfurt, Austria; Elletra, Trieste, Italy; INRIA, France, National Technical University of Athens, Greece; Jozef Stefan Institute, Slovenia; University of Salford, Great Britain; as well as customers and employees of NEXOR, Sybase, and ALIS Technologies.

The MAITS project is expected to enter into coordinated efforts with other LE- Sector projects, but the degree of integration has not yet been determined.

MAITS Contact People

Mr. Stephen Barker Project Manager MAITS Consortium Business IT Solutions Sunrise House Norris Lane Chaddleworth Berkshire, RG16 0DZ United Kingdom +44 1488 638798 +44 1488 638768 maits@dkuug.dk

Mr. Michael McKenna Globalisation Architect Sybase (UK) Ltd Sybase Court Crown Lane Maidenhead Berkshire,SL6 8QZ United Kingdom +44 1628 597125 +44 1628 597000 maits@dkuug.dk

Start date	1 January 1996
Duration	36 months
Total Effort	255 person-months (estimate)
Keywords	locales, X.400, X.500, WWW, e-mail, multilingual, transliteration, Transparent Language Processing, character set conversion, translation memory, machine translation