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Resources, Technical Assistance and Technology News => Translator resources => CAT Tools Tips and Assistance => Topic started by: spiros on 06 Nov, 2013, 17:28:21

Title: You see Greek capital accented characters when your text is lowercase? (uppercase in text-transform css property)
Post by: spiros on 06 Nov, 2013, 17:28:21
You see Greek capital accented characters when your text is lowercase?

This is a typical localization error. Many developers, when they want to quickly and easily convert to uppercase, they use the text-transform css property, something like:

Code: [Select]
h2 {text-transform:uppercase;}
Whereas this works fine with English text, it is not as amenable to Greek text. Why? Because Greek all caps must not have accents or other diacritics (with very few exceptions, like the Greek "or" which is "ή"), and this css property cannot accommodate that. For example you get something like:

ΚΕΦΑΛΑΊΑ ΓΡΆΜΜΑΤΑ ΜΕ ΤΌΝΟΥΣ

When the correct is:

ΚΕΦΑΛΑΙΑ ΓΡΑΜΜΑΤΑ ΜΕ ΤΟΝΟΥΣ

And the actual source string is

κεφαλαία γράμματα με τόνους

By the way, this transformation from lowercase to uppercase Greek without accents usually works just fine in MS Word (select text, press Shift+F3).

Much to my chagrin I have even noticed such styles being used in DTP applications too. For example, this is the actual text:

Quote
Όταν είναι αναγκαίο να σταματήσει η κίνηση του πλαισίου αμέσως, πατήστε το κουμπί <:elf "HardwareControl" 1>Διακοπή έκτακτης ανάγκης<:/elf "HardwareControl">

Which produces the capitals in the output pdf with the style "HardwareControl" being the culprit.

The first 3 attachments illustrate an instance of this issue on a web site I translated. Note that in the actual view source, Greek is lowercase. Typical also with SMF (https://www.google.gr/search?q=SMF+%CE%BA%CE%B5%CF%86%CE%B1%CE%BB%CE%B1%CE%AF%CE%B1+%CF%84%CF%8C%CE%BD%CE%BF&rlz=1C1SAVM_enGR528GR528&oq=SMF+%CE%BA%CE%B5%CF%86%CE%B1%CE%BB%CE%B1%CE%AF%CE%B1+%CF%84%CF%8C%CE%BD%CE%BF&aqs=chrome..69i57.3404j0j7&sourceid=chrome&espv=210&es_sm=122&ie=UTF-8)'s default theme.

The remaining ones are an example from a DTP file with the text in TagEditor and the pdf document.

How to fix – three different ways

1. In order to avoid this issue, the translators should be provided with the text in the case it will have when it is displayed. I.e. if one wants capitalized strings, then provide capitalized strings to the translators from the outset, not lowercase ones which you capitalize by means of css. If you want both lowercase and uppercase for the same strings, then provide strings for both cases.

2. Open the html file and adapt the body tag (or any element that encases text) as shown below:

Code: [Select]
<body lang='el'>
3. Remove the text-transform:uppercase instances from css

See also:
text-transform - CSS: Cascading Style Sheets | MDN (https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/text-transform)
Styling using  language attributes (https://www.w3.org/International/questions/qa-css-lang)
Title: Re: You see Greek capital accented characters when your text is lowercase? (text-transform css property)
Post by: spiros on 20 Nov, 2013, 15:22:41
Would you think that sites like Google are exempt? Not at all...
Title: Re: You see Greek capital accented characters when your text is lowercase? (uppercase in text-transform css property)
Post by: spiros on 26 May, 2014, 15:48:06
Άλλο ένα παράδειγμα. Το godaddy μεταφράστηκε πρόσφατα σε πολλές γλώσσες, ανάμεσά τους τα ελληνικά.