MadCap Lingo, the XML-based, fully integrated translation memory system and authoring tool, eliminates the need for file transfers in order to complete translation--preserving valuable content and formatting to deliver a consistent experience across multiple languages. With version 2.0, MadCap Lingo significantly expands translation support to include the DITA standard, Microsoft Word, and a range of standard text and language formats.

The OASIS DITA Adoption Committee has formed a subcommittee to provide editorial oversight for the DITA XML.org Focus Area. The Subcommittee will meet by phone on the first and third Mondays of the month at 10:00-11:00 EST/ GMT -5 (with plans to reduce meetings to once a month as quickly as possible).

Kristen Eberlein of IBM chairs the Subcommittee; participants include representatives of Boeing, Cisco, Comtech Services, IBM, Justsystems, and others.

In a world where translators are still being asked to translate websites starting from snippets of text pasted into a Word document, PDFs of screens and even printouts of all the pages of a website, we can only hope that someday all content will be created in a structured environment like DITA XML for example.
I've created several text-rich, multilingual websites using DITA and the Open Toolkit and recently wrote an article about this for the US magazine Multilingual Computing.

Simon Bate writes: Last October, I wrote about being scared. Today, I want to talk about something that seems somewhat scary, but it isn't...or shouldn't be. It may be daunting, but it's not scary. That "thing" is the DITA Open Toolkit (DITA OT). The DITA OT is the most common way to convert DITA content into output.  The output from the DITA OT is just about as ordinary as it gets.

In the January 2009 issue of Inside Out an e-bulletin from Stilo International authors discuss the signs that DITA has come of age.  Click on the links below to read the full articles.