Internationalization/Multilingual products

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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
    • ingredients.8.400.jpg

Problems not addressed

  • Products that have different labels in different languages, with the same barcode
  • 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

  • There is a field to indicate the "main" language of a product
    • 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)
  • 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
  • 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

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
    • 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"}