Another attempt at plain language

Felix Sasaki fsasaki at w3.org
Fri Sep 18 09:34:49 CEST 2015


> Am 17.09.2015 um 17:29 schrieb Peter Constable <petercon at microsoft.com>:
> 
> Kent:
>  
> Two comments:
>  
> Re the first of your reply, I meant “relative to” in exactly the same way it would pertain to any other language tag or subtag: every subtag exists to create a contrastive distinction from something else.
>  
> Re the second, “controlled language” is cover term that encompasses exactly what this request is all about: the content was not created in the way people naturally speak or write, but was controlled in some respects for some communicative purpose — e.g., being “plain” or “simple” to facilitate comprehension by L2 audiences, or persons with cognitive disabilities, or whatever.

This „whatever“ is the issue in this thread. There are controlled language tools and these work with rule sets. See e.g. 
	http://languagetool.org/ <http://languagetool.org/>
a „plain language“ subtag would not be of use for such tools, since the rule sets are either on a language general level or very specific („rule set for manuals in company X, department Y“). So a „plain language“ subtag would serve no filtering or lookup purposes.

- Felix   

>  
>  
> Peter
>  
> From: Ietf-languages [mailto:ietf-languages-bounces at alvestrand.no <mailto:ietf-languages-bounces at alvestrand.no>] On Behalf Of Kent Karlsson
> Sent: Tuesday, September 15, 2015 2:27 AM
> To: ietf-languages at alvestrand.no <mailto:ietf-languages at alvestrand.no>
> Subject: Re: Another attempt at plain language
>  
> 
> Den 2015-09-15 02:18, skrev "Peter Constable" <petercon at microsoft.com <x-msg://7/petercon@microsoft.com>>:
> 
> I have no problem with wanting to use a language tag to declare “this is a simplified variant” (relative to some other document that doesn’t have that).
> 
> There is no need to refer to another "non-simple" variant *document*. The "simplified language" document (radio program, ...) may be quite separate from any other document (or radio program or whatever).
> 
> But before proceeding with anything along this line, I think I’d want to see some input from linguistic experts that are dealing with this area generally — and by that, I don’t someone working just on accessibility. Content may be authored using controlled language in a variety of contexts for a variety of reasons.
> 
> Going for "controlled language" I think is a non-starter for a general variant (as requested). Very few languages will have any *controlled* variant defined. Any variant tag for this will have to much more informal. (I still think the A1-C2 levels in CEF may be of interest.)
> 
> /Kent K
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