DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION OF MULTI LANGUAGE BASE MAP INFORMATION SYSTEM FOR DIGITAL XINJIANG

A. Kurban, A. Ablimit

Xinjiang Institute of Ecology and Geography, Chinese Academy of Sciences

alishir@ms.xjb.ac.cn

Internationalization is one of the major factors to influent application of geographic information systems (GIS) in world wide. Localization of GIS provides practical working conditions for end users in one specific country or region. Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) is the largest province in area in China; it takes one of sixth of whole terrestrial territory of China and borders Mongolia, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kirgizstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India. There are 13 minorities, such as Uyghur, Kazak, Uzbek, live there with many ethnic languages and using their own characters that originate and modified from Arabic characters. Nowadays, most commercial GIS software support Unicode encoding method it makes build a Multilanguage attribute database for GIS possible.

This paper introduces the primary test of developing a Multilanguage Base Map Information System (MBMIS) for Digital Xinjiang (DXJ) Project. For describing regional information in local language and sharing geographic information world wide, the administrator and desktop user interface, website client interface, attribute database, place name database, multilanguage labeling and annotations in graphic displaying and map printing have been tested in Uyghur, Chinese, Russian and English. And for supporting correct pronunciation of a place name in local language voice recording of Uyghur and Chinese linked to the database for a good oral communication (Uyghur) from multimedia database. Recently all tests are still undergoing for make the system more flexible and stable.