Variant subtag proposal: ALA-LC romanization of Russian

[Doug Ewell]

Avram Lyon <ajlyon at ucla dot edu> wrote:

>  3. Record Requested:
>
>     Type: variant
>     Subtag: alalc97
>     Description: ALA-LC Romanization, 1997 edition
>     Comments: Romanizations recommended by the American
> Library Association and the Library of Congress, in "ALA-LC 
> Romanization
> Tables: Transliteration Schemes for Non-Roman Scripts" (1997)

I appreciate the work Avram has done to fill in this form correctly and 
thoroughly.  Doing this makes Michael's and my job much easier.

Are we absolutely sure we want to limit the scope of this variant to 
only the 1997 edition?  As Martin points out, we would have to exclude 
explicitly all of the tables that have been updated since 1997, and as a 
conscientious organization, ALA will probably continue to update their 
tables as they deem necessary.  The proposed subtag requires users to be 
aware of the exact date of release of the table; I don't know if 
prospective users of this subtag typically would be.

In addition, subsequently added subtags for 'alalc00', 'alalc05', etc. 
will not be retrieved when searching for a tag containing 'alalc97'. 
This may be by design, of course, but are the differences between 
revisions really expected to be so great that their subtags should be as 
different as 'scouse' and 'boont'?  Avram mentioned that this approach 
could result in unnecessary tag proliferation.

Note that I am not suggesting sub-subtagging, like 
"ru-Latn-alalc-alalc97" versus "ru-Latn-alalc-alalc09"; I'm asking 
whether the date information needs to be captured at all.  I guess to 
this end I'm disagreeing with Randy that the subtag needs to be 
different if "there have been any changes in the transcription scheme(s) 
used by an institution," even the slightest change in a single letter. 
We don't tag 1980s English differently from the English of today because 
people now use words like "ginormous" and "blog" and start half their 
sentences with "So, ..."

--
Doug Ewell  |  Thornton, Colorado, USA  |  http://www.ewellic.org
RFC 5645, 4645, UTN #14  |  ietf-languages @ http://is.gd/2kf0s ­