Internationalization/Multilingual products

Multilingual products

This page is to discuss how to handle products that have text in multiple languages on their label.

Problems addressed

• Single products with more than one language on the label
  • Bilingual products
    • Products where all the texts on the label are in two (or more) languages
    • Common in bilingual countries (Belgium, Canada...)
    • e.g. most Cora products have all the text in French and in Dutch: http://world.openfoodfacts.org/brand/cora
• Products with some information in multiple languages
  • e.g. ingredients and nutrition facts in many languages
  • 

Note that the information can be different between languages (happens on beer).

Problems not addressed

• Products that have different labels in different languages, with the same barcode
  • will be addressed by Project:Product versions and history
• Products that have different labels in different languages, with a different barcode
  • we simply store them as different products
  • we might consider linking the products in some way in a future project
• Translating ingredients
  • will be addressed by ingredients taxonomy

Current status

Data entry

• We currently have a field to indicate the "main" language of a product
  • The intention of this field was to put the language that is the most prominent on the label.
    • There are a few products where the split is 50% / 50% but those are not very common.
  • Values entered in the product edit form are considered to be in the "main" language of the product
  • Values entered in fields for which we have a taxonomy (categories, countries, labels, traces) are mapped according to the "main" language of the product
    • e.g. entering "jus de fruits" in the categories field when the main language is set to French will result in en:fruit-juices to be assigned.

• Values for nutrition facts are global and assigned to a canonical field
  • Except when the nutrient's name is unknown (i.e. not in our current nutrient taxonomy)
• The default nutrients shown depend on the country (EU nutrition table vs US/CA nutrition table)

• Images are selected/cropped for the "main" language of the product (product front, ingredients and nutrition facts)

Data display

• Fields for which we have a taxonomy (categories, countries, labels, traces) are displayed in the target language. (target language is set by the subdomain, e.g. using http://world.openfoodfacts.org , we will see categories in English even for French products, using http://es.openfoodfacts.org will result in Spanish)
  • Only if the category exists in the taxonomy
  • Only if the target language exists for this category in the taxonomy
    • If the target language doesn't exist, English is used to display the field value

• Nutrition facts are displayed in the target language
  • The nutrition facts are displayed according to the country (different order and presentation for EU nutrition tables vs US/CA nutrition tables)

• Fields without a taxonomy are displayed in the language they were entered in
  • common name, quantity, packaging, brands, origin of ingredients, manufacturing or processing places, city/state/country, stores, link to the product page, best before date
  • ingredients

• Images for product front, ingredients and nutrition facts are for the main language of the product (and not the target language)

Solution

Data entry

• Taxonomize as many fields as possible
  • Taxonomized field need to be completed in only one language
  • Packaging, origins of ingredients, purchase places
    • Note: packaging and purchase places do not correspond to text on the label

• Enable users to enter data for more than one language:
  • Select different images or different part of the images for product front, ingredients and nutrition facts
  • Enter data (text) for more than one language

• We keep the "main language" field
  • Indicates the most prominent language on the label
  • When the split is 50% / 50% (e.g. some products sold in Belgium with one side in Dutch and another side in French), picking either is fine.

Data display

• Taxonomized fields will be displayed in the target language
• Display other fields and pictures in the target language if the product has data in that language
• Indicate in which languages the product data is available, and provide a way to see it

Interface design

• How to make data entry not too overwhelming?
• Solution 1: tabs to switch between languages
  • + button to add a language tab
  • tab displays only the fields that need to be completed in other languages:
    • images
    • fiels like generic name, ingredients
• Solution 2: multiply each field by the number of languages, display all languages for one field together
  • + button to dynamically add a new language

Technical design

Taxonomize all or most multilingual tag fields

• Packaging, origins of ingredients and purchase places are tag fields (they contain comma separated values) that are not yet taxonomized
• The existing taxonomy system will take care of the mapping between different languages
• The taxonomies need to be created or completed
• To be determined: what to do with brands?
  • Typically not translated
    • But exceptions exist
  • Could benefit from being taxonomized in order to have a hierarchy

Selection/crop of images in more than one language

• For product, ingredients and nutrition facts

Entry of fields in more than one language

• Keep all exisiting fields as-is
  • including the "main language" field
  • e.g. ingredients, generic_name etc.
  • "ingredients_text":"Chocolate, milk"
  • For compatibility and to enable incremental implementation and deployment
• Create new fields suffixed by _lang, with a hash
  • "ingredients_text_lang":{"en":"Chocolate, milk", "fr":"Chocolat, lait"}
• Create new languages field
  • Hash that contains languages for which we have values for at least one field
  • "languages":{"en":"1", "fr":"1"}