Scottish English

JFC (Jefsey) Morfin jefsey at jefsey.com
Thu Oct 20 22:13:00 CEST 2005


Dear Karen,
You ask a _question_. David comments it. I comment your _need_ to 
David. You then you show you caught the difference: your first 
paragraph discusses your question. Then you comment my comment on your needs.

You agree with my evaluation that you need more elements and you 
lists some of their metadata, showing that you would benefit from 
being ISO 11179 conformant, or that you aready are. (FYI. there is no 
other objection to RFC 3066 bis to being ISO 11179 conformant, than 
Peter saying it is not - has nothing to do with with RFC 3066 bis, 
but with the IANA implementation).

In an other part of my comment to David, I discuss the lack of 
multimode support of ISO 639-6 and RFC 3066 bis which are written 
language  oriented and the lack of both of networked language 
support. I do not see what is the relation with RFC 3066. Then you 
seem to challenge me on RFC 3066? We are so in agreement that we have 
a site about that: http://rfc3066.org.

So, apart your misunderstanding of your own words, I feel we (again) 
totally agree?
All the best.
jfc


At 19:53 20/10/2005, Karen_Broome at spe.sony.com wrote:

>Jefsey,
>
>I felt my question was quite clear.  I asked how to make a 
>distinction between narrative audio language in two similar flavors 
>-- English English and Scottish English. That's all.
>
>But for the record, language that appears on signs or within the 
>actual picture is not generally something we track as descriptive 
>works data. Our primary classification concern is the language (or 
>languages) used to tell the story of a narrative film. If there is a 
>non-English sign for a French, Hungarian, or Ethiopian restaurant 
>that appears in a film set in New York, documenting this really 
>isn't of much use to anyone. Where the signs are an important part 
>of the narrative, subtitles may be used to assist understanding -- 
>even in the original language. In extremely rare cases, these scenes 
>may be reshot as part of the localization process (this happened 
>more in silent films than it does today -- today this is really only 
>likely in animated works). I still don't see how this presents a 
>problem for RFC 3066.
>
>If we did need to track written language actually appearing within 
>the filmed frame, this is clearly another instance of text language 
>-- not a separate entity called "rendered language." I would make 
>"rendered," "closed caption," "audio description" and other language 
>distinctions through other fields -- Text Language Type or Language 
>Usage Type. Those fields relate to language USE -- not 
>IDENTIFICATION, the goal of RFC 3066. I think this is something you 
>are unwilling to accept -- that perhaps there is a limit to what 
>should be contained in a tag designed strictly to identify the language.
>
>It might be more useful for you to identify other needs separately 
>and document solutions for the networking issues you perceive rather 
>than twist any question about the identification of language into an 
>opportunity to show us how insufficient RFC 3066 is from your 
>perspective and call for 11179 compliance.
>
>The original audio language of the film is a Scottish variant of 
>English. Whether the film is dubbed by the original actors or a new 
>dubbing cast is irrelevant. It's a dubbed version.
>
>You still haven't proven to anyone that RFC 3066 is insufficient for 
>audiovisual identification needs -- especially me -- and no one 
>argues that there is a need to identify languages found in 
>audiovisual content. RFC 3066 is already embedded in many metadata 
>standards that serve the motion picture industry and motion picture 
>archives. When 639-6 is released, I will be reviewing that standard 
>to see if its added granularity, spoken/written distinctions, and 
>taxonomic structure better suit our needs. I look forward to seeing 
>it, but it does not exist today.
>
>Karen Broome
>Metadata Systems Designer
>Sony Pictures Entertainment
>
>
>
>
>"JFC (Jefsey) Morfin" <jefsey at jefsey.com>
>Sent by: ietf-languages-bounces at alvestrand.no
>
>10/20/2005 08:24 AM
>
>         To:        Speechways at aol.com, petercon at microsoft.com, 
> ietf-languages at iana.org
>         cc:        rd at afrac.org, info at afrac.org
>         Subject:        Re: Scottish English
>
>
>At 08:40 20/10/2005, Speechways at aol.com wrote:
>Peter,
>Thank you your quick-fire response, even so late in the day. 
>Language is important to most of us as a means of personal and 
>social identity, as well as a means of communication.  I am not as 
>sure as you are, that our colleagues in the media will wish to dumb 
>down distinctions which are meaningful to the communities they are 
>portraying and serving.  One of the strengths of English (and even 
>more so of Chinese) is that a dominant standardised language is 
>backed up and enhanced by a rich variety of related but distinctive 
>locally spoken forms, whether these are tagged as "languages" or 
>not.  I hope you will agree that such important cultural realities 
>should not be swept under the carpet in the formulation of 
>globalised standards.
>David Dalby
>Linguasphere Observatory/Linguasphere ICT
>
>Dear David,
>I am not sure it addresses the need of Karen anyway. The discussion 
>has changed to tagging a language or another one. But I read her 
>need as to tag a picture version (probably more "rendering"?) where 
>the background (written spots, names of shops, etc.) is the same, 
>but where the speaking is partly different (I suppose the picture 
>may include non Scot characters who may have the same script [cinema 
>meaning]). This is the old debate: what is tagged. All the existing 
>tools - including future ISO 639-6 and RFC 3066 bis are more or less 
>multilingual oriented but not multimodal oriented.
>
>The problem is always the same: in a network environment who is to 
>be the master and who is to be the slave? The computer or the 
>person? The support of languages is already a big problem - 
>Linguasphere, as an ontology, probably addresses without 
>controversy. But what about the modal aspects, the new language form 
>(after spoken, signed and written: networked) and the new support 
>(after tablets, papiri, stone, paper: multi-media) not to speak of 
>the architext issue (here we see that the same architext [script of 
>the picture] is rendered differently by the same author - this is 
>not dubbing, which is another parallel problem).
>
>I think that only an ISO 11179 (not strictly) conformant approach 
>can help. But even in this case, they have not yet approached the 
>"networked" nature added to language and the need to add "paradata" 
>to the metadata/data model.
>jfc
>
>PS. I always asked myself how to tag the "Ecosse" post on cars.
>
>In a message dated 10/20/2005 6:35:11 AM GMT Daylight Time, 
>petercon at microsoft.com writes:
>
>I suspect that for the application Karen is dealing with, 
>fine-grained distinctions between varieties of Scottish English (or 
>varieties of Scots) is probably not that helpful: generally, the 
>people cataloguing the content and the people retrieving the content 
>aren’t going to know how to tell them apart. I suspect that all 
>she cares about is the difference between heavily-Scottish-accented 
>English (if it isn’t Scots) and mildly-Scottish-accented English.
>
>
>
>
>
>Peter Constable
>
>
>_______________________________________________
>Ietf-languages mailing list
>Ietf-languages at alvestrand.no
><http://www.alvestrand.no/mailman/listinfo/ietf-languages>http://www.alvestrand.no/mailman/listinfo/ietf-languages_______________________________________________
>Ietf-languages mailing list
>Ietf-languages at alvestrand.no
>http://www.alvestrand.no/mailman/listinfo/ietf-languages
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://www.alvestrand.no/pipermail/ietf-languages/attachments/20051020/27c4a8d9/attachment.html


More information about the Ietf-languages mailing list