[Fwd]: Response to Mark's message]

Mark Davis mark.davis at jtcsv.com
Thu Apr 10 13:02:42 CEST 2003


I agree fully with Martin. My criteria for written language are purely
pragmatic; what would a copy-editor say?

If I gave him/er text like:

A. "Theatre Center News: The date of the last version of this document was
2003年3月20日. A copy can be obtained for $50,0 or 1.234,57 грн. We would like
to acknowledge contributions by the following authors (in alphabetical
order): Alaa Ghoneim, Behdad Esfahbod, Ahmed Talaat, Eric Mader, Asmus
Freytag, Avery Bishop, and Doug Felt."

S/he would say: Sorry, that is *far* from acceptable English for
publication, do it again! So I would change it to either B or C below,
depending on which orthographic variant of English was the target for the
publication:

B. "Theater Center News: The date of the last version of this document was
3/20/2003. A copy can be obtained for $50.00 or 1,234.57 Ukranian Rubles. We
would like to acknowledge contributions by the following authors (in
alphabetical order): Alaa Ghoneim, Ahmed Talaat, Asmus Freytag, Avery
Bishop, Behdad Esfahbod, Doug Felt, Eric Mader."

C. "Theatre Centre News: The date of the last version of this document was
20/3/2003. A copy can be obtained for $50.00 or 1,234.57 Ukranian Rubles. We
would like to acknowledge contributions by the following authors (in
alphabetical order): Alaa Ghoneim, Ahmed Talaat, Asmus Freytag, Avery
Bishop, Behdad Esfahbod, Doug Felt, Eric Mader."

Clearly there are many acceptable variations on this text. For example, s/he
might still quibble with the use of first vs. last name sorting in the list,
but clearly the first list was not acceptable English alphabetical order.
And if you are quoting a name, like "Theatre Centre News", you may leave it
in the source orthography even if it differs from the publication target
orthography. And so on.

However, just as clearly, there limits on what is acceptable English, and
2003年3月20日, for example, is not.

Mark
(مرقص بن داود)
________
mark.davis at jtcsv.com
IBM, MS 50-2/B11, 5600 Cottle Rd, SJ CA 95193
(408) 256-3148
fax: (408) 256-0799

----- Original Message -----
From: "Martin Duerst" <duerst at w3.org>
To: "John Cowan" <jcowan at reutershealth.com>
Cc: <ietf-languages at alvestrand.no>
Sent: Thursday, April 10, 2003 10:41
Subject: Re: [Fwd]: Response to Mark's message]


> At 14:56 03/04/09 -0400, John Cowan wrote:
> >Martin Duerst scripsit:
> >
> > > In effect, 'orthography' could go as far as including things such as
> > > number formatting or date formatting, and maybe even sorting.
> >
> >The trouble is that it's not even clear that numbers and dates are tied
> >to the language or not.  I want my documents spell-checked as en-us,
> >but I like ISO dates rather than bogus American ones.  Must I set my
> >"locale" to Japanese?
>
> [others said something similar]
>
> I think I was pushing things a bit. But I still think I'm not totally
> wrong. In particular, I think that number/date formatting in running
> text is quite a bit part of the language, or at least very much
> influenced by the language. This should be obvious in examples such
> as "Today is April the 10th, 2003." If we get to "Today is 04/10/03."
> then I have to start to agree with you that this becomes less of
> a language issue. But I guess to some extent it still is, because
> the average en-us reader would correctly interpret 04/10/03, and
> would be confused by other orderings.
>
> The fact that you prefer ISO date formats doesn't mean that date
> formatting isn't part of (written) language conventions; the easiest
> way to explain it is that you don't like the general en-us conventions
> and therefore use something different. I also don't like 04/10/03
> because it is confusing, and I think that in today's networked world,
> the chance for confusion is much higher than it was a while ago.
> Also, I suspect that this list has an unusually high percentage
> of people who prefer ISO dates over 04/10/03 :-). There are other
> conventions in en-us that I don't like, and don't observe, such as
> "quoting." (putting the period inside the quotes even when logically,
> it is outside).
>
> Anybody can of course create his/her preferred conventions for
> writing in a language. While I think it is highly desirable to
> be able to do that in locale-related areas, I think one potential
> drawback of using language codes for some locale aspects is that
> it is difficult to address such personal conventions in such
> a framework.
>
>
> >In addition, collation is not really a data property, it genuinely is a
> >user property.  If I'm looking at Danish names, I want them collated in
> >English order, not Danish order, or I'm never going to be able to find
> >anything.
>
> Fully agreed. I don't want to claim that collation is a data property.
> But I'm very sure collation is very much related to language. You
> just showed that by saying 'English order' and 'Danish order'.
>
> The limit here is that there are cases, some of them well-known
> (such as German telephone-book ordering) where there are several
> orders for a single language.
>
>
> Regards,    Martin.
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> Ietf-languages at alvestrand.no
> http://www.alvestrand.no/mailman/listinfo/ietf-languages
>



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