Swiss german, spoken

[Karen_Broome at spe.sony.com]

Comment below. Sorry my e-mail client doesn't do threading well.






Harald Tveit Alvestrand <harald at alvestrand.no>
06/13/2005 08:36 PM

 
        To:     Karen_Broome at spe.sony.com
        cc:     "'IETF Languages Discussion'" <ietf-languages at iana.org>, "'Michael 
Everson'" <everson at evertype.com>, Debbie Garside 
<debbie at ictmarketing.co.uk>
        Subject:        RE: Swiss german, spoken




--On 13. juni 2005 13:23 -0700 Karen_Broome at spe.sony.com wrote:

>> Will a MIME type help me distinguish between Arabic, Devangari, Latin,
>> Traditional Chinese, or Simplified Chinese in the XML format?

>Nope - but if that's the question, you've already decided that you've got 

>written text.....

Not sure I understand your point here. Yes, I have written text -- IF I'm 
using subtitles. But I need to describe BOTH written and spoken language 
in the same XML format or database. However, the actual language I'm 
describing with this XML packet may be a textual image on film OR audio in 
that film. The XML packet will travel with a digitization of that film and 
there may be more than one language dubbing track or even subtitle track 
associated with a single digitization. (Note: This is just one way we use 
language codes.)

For me, the script is often a regional variant of language much like a 
dialect. Traditional Mandarin goes to Hong Kong. Simplified goes to 
Mainland China. Serbia might get Serbian subtitles in Cyrillic, Croatia 
would get Croatian in Latin, but one "Serbo-Croatian" dubbing would likely 
serve both regions.

Certainly the script type could be a separate metadata property, but it 
seems like describing the script along with the language is fairly 
well-established and serves my needs well.

Karen Broome