Language X within scope of language Y

Stephen Deach sdeach at adobe.com
Wed Jan 19 18:32:28 CET 2005


Misha,
   I agree that we should not try to redefine or excessively overload 
xml:lang nor the associated locale specifiers. I meant my prior response to 
be somewhat "tongue in cheek" - but neglected to attach the ;)

I agree there should be some way to specify the primary language of a 
document and to properly indicate drop-in or borrowed phrases from another 
language as being (in some sense) secondary, yet it is still necessary to 
indicate the language on the embedded component for spelling and 
hyphenation purposes.

I have yet to see any method for fully conferring pronunciation/dialect. 
(Even in theater/stage notes.)

--Stephen Deach



At 2005.01.19-16:53(+0000), Misha Wolf wrote:

>[IETF Languages list copied]
>
>I think that we must not try to redefine the meaning of:
>
>    <foo xml:lang="Y">
>       ...
>       <bar xml:lang="X">
>       ...
>
>I agree that "en-IT" expresses "English as written/spoken in Italy",
>but that wasn't, I think, the problem that Reto was writing about in:
>http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-rdf-interest/2005Jan/0125.html
>
>Misha
>
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: www-international-request at w3.org
>[mailto:www-international-request at w3.org] On Behalf Of Stephen Deach
>Sent: 19 January 2005 16:39
>To: Jeremy Carroll; Reto Bachmann-Gmuer
>Cc: Martin Duerst; www-rdf-interest at w3.org; www-international at w3.org
>Subject: Re: XMLLiterals and language
>
>
>Isn't encoding dialect the purpose of the variant component of a locale
>specifier.
>
>Also,
>    What's wrong with "en-IT" for English as spoken in Italy ?
>
>
>At 2005.01.19-16:29(+0000), Jeremy Carroll wrote:
>
>
>
> >I am not at all convinced that this issue is irrelevant outside the
> >semantic web domain. e.g. a text-to-speech system should, pronounce
> >english words quite differently when in an italian mode, since italian
> >speakers typically use italian pronounciation rules for english words
> >being used in italian sentences. As an English mother-tongue speaker,
> >with reasonable italian the most difficult sentences I find to
> >understand are such mixed sentences.
> >
> ><span xml:lang="it">
> >Abbiamo fatto questo lavoro per il progetto
> ><span xml:lang="en">"Question How"</span>
> ></span>
> >
> >the words "question how" are pronounced quite differently from in
> >English (even when the mother tongue italian speaker is a fluent
>english
> >speaker). (bitter experience here!)
> >
> >Jeremy
> >
> >Reto Bachmann-Gmuer wrote:
> > >
> > > Martin Duerst wrote:
> > >
> > >> It seems to me that what Reto is looking for is a way to define
> > >> a "primary language" for a small piece of data that itself is in
> > >> a different language. Because such divergent cases are very rare,
> > >> it seems they have been overlooked up to now.
> > >>
> > >>
> > > I don't think this cases are that rare, looking at German computer
>books
> > > many titles consist only of English words, however they are the
>German
> > > titles (the first is relevant for pronunciation, the latter for
>semantic
> > > processing).
> > >
> > >> To me, the right thing to do seems to be to define the "primary"
> > >> or "intended" language separately (e.g. with a separate property),
> > >> but to define that property so that it defaults to the text
> > >> processing language.
> > >>
> > > Having a primary language for Literals would be fine, however I
>think
> > > the text processing language (specified in the xml) should default
>to
> > > the primary language (which imho should be defined by means of rdf)
> > > rather than the other way round. This seems more coherent with
> > > plain-literals and particularly it does not require RDF-Processors
>to
> > > understand and parse XML in order to do things like filtering by
>language.
> > >
> > >> I'm glad to report that I just found the 'payload' module in
> > >> RSS 1.1 (http://inamidst.com/rss1.1/payload) that uses XML
> > >> Literals rather than encoding. Great!
> > >
> > >
> > > That's cool, and it would be cooler with the possibility to specify
>a
> > > language for the whole payload (even when some of the rare cases
>apply).
> > >
> > > reto
> > >
> > >
>
>
>---Steve Deach
>     sdeach at adobe.com
>
>
>
>
>
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---Steve Deach
    sdeach at adobe.com  



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