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Dr.
Tom's Independent Software Reviews
presents:
Special Features
Multimedia
Localization
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What
is Multimedia?:
When browsing through the many online dictionaries and resources
available for free today, I found a variety of different definitions
of multimedia, each stressing certain aspects. My favorite is a short
and open definition found on the excellent Glossary
of Terms by Scala, Inc.:
"Multimedia is the combination of various presentation
media such
as text, sound,
graphics,
animation,
and
video.
The
mother of all dictionaries - Encyclopædia
Britannica which only gives you the first lines of an article for
free, features only the term "interactive multimedia", stressing another
apect of multimedia: interactivity: "Any computer-delivered
electronic system that allows the user to control, combine,
and manipulate different
types
of media, such as text,
sound,
video, computer graphics, and animation. Interactive multimedia integrate
computer, memory storage, digital (binary) data, telephone, television,
and other information technologies. Their most common applications
include…"
One more I give you: the comprehensive Webopedia:
Online Dictionary for Computer and Internet Terms, emphasises the importance
of computers in multimedia: "The use of computers to
present text, graphics, video,
animation,
and sound in an integrated way. Long touted as the future revolution
in computing, multimedia applications were, until the mid-90s, uncommon
due to the expensive hardware required. With increases in performance
and decreases in price, however, multimedia is now commonplace. Nearly
all PCs are capable of displaying video, though the resolution available
depends on the power of the computer's video adapter and CPU.
Because of the storage demands of multimedia applications, the most
effective media are CD-ROMs."
Besides the case of the "pure" media text and voice, it is the common
problem in all types of media and in any combination of those (multimedia)
to have written and spoken language accessible for an
easy
localization
and then get
those translation back into the media. As
multimedia is obviously a wide field, I will focus on a few quite different
examples which are all important
media types in Internet
presentations: Images, Macromedia Flash Movies
and Digital Video. I will describe the opportunity and challanges of
these special media formats
in terms of localization efferts and provide a short overview of the
tools of the trade.
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