Up-Translation and Up-Transformation: Tasks, Challenges, and Solutions
a Balisage pre-conference symposium

Document users sometimes find that the formats of the documents available are not rich enough to support their intended uses. Conversion of content and/or increasing the specificity of markup is an important task in many different content and information workflows. Markup transformations can involve high-level structuring, detailed component structuring, and/or enhancing information by inserting or matching or linking to external vocabularies or data. Enhancing markup presents numerous challenges including lack of structure of the inputs or inconsistency of input data down to the level of spelling, punctuation, and vocabulary. Sources for up-translation may be XML, word processing documents, or just plain text.

The range of approaches to up-transformation is as varied as the specifics of the input and required outputs. Solutions may combine automated processing with human review or could be 100% software implementations. Transformations can require maintenance and evolution as content practices and standards evolve over time.

The presentations in this pre-conference symposium will include goals, challenges, solutions, and workflows for transformation and significant XML enhancement, including approaches, tools, and techniques. Topics include content types such as LaTeX, MS Word XML, RTF, HTML, TEI, DITA, JATS, BITS and workflows for existing content and new content. HTML as a robust intermediate format will be a major topic. The symposium will also include a session of demos of conversion tools.

Chair: Evan Owens, Cenveo