LANGUAGE TAG REGISTRATION FORM

[Luc Pardon]

LANGUAGE TAG REGISTRATION FORM

Name of requester          : Luc Pardon
E-mail address of requester: lucp at skopos.be
Tag to be registered       : el-Latn

English name of language   : Greek in Latin script
Native name of language (transcribed into ASCII): Ellinika

Reference to published description of the language (book or article):

Greek is customarily written in the Greek script. However, there is also
a need to write it in Latin script, using transliteration systems such
as those defined in ISO 843-1997 and ELOT 743 (1987). See
http://transliteration.eki.ee for an overview of Greek-Latin
transliteration systems.

Some cases where this need arises are as follows:

1) Many Greeks have emigrated and they and their descendants live in
areas of the world where computer systems may not be able (or
configured) to represent Greek script. It is not uncommon for websites
and other communications by and/or for this audience to be written (in
some form of) transliterated Greek. 

2) Among non-Greeks there is considerable interest in Greek culture.
When writing for that audience it is often instructive to provide short
phrases in Greek (for example: titles of musical works or songs),
usually along with the translation (into the host language) for
didactical purposes. It is common to transliterate the Greek phrase in
Latin script because part of the non-Greek target audience may be unable
to read the Greek script.

Furthermore, the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 require
proper identification of natural language as a Priority 1 item. This is
needed, for example, to enable screen readers and other assistive
technology. For web content that contains transliterated Greek text, it
is impossible to meet this requirement without the proposed "el-Latn"
tag because the "el" tag implies Greek script.

Finally, The need for proper identification of scripts in looking up
language resources, as indicated when registering the other language
tags of the form [lang]-[script], does apply in this case as well.

Any other relevant information:

This language tag would conform to the proposed successor to RFC 3066 if
and when adopted (see
http://www.w3.org/International/core/langtags/rfc3066bis.html).

The "Latn" subtag is as defined by ISO15924] -- "Codes for the
representation of the names of scripts".