Swiss german, spoken

[Harald Tveit Alvestrand]

--On 14. juni 2005 09:54 -0700 Karen_Broome at spe.sony.com wrote:

> 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.

That should be relatively easy....

<item>
  <dialogue>
    <language>zh-min</language>
  </dialogue>
  <subtitles track=1>
    <language>zh-hant</language>
  </subtitles>
  <subtitles track=2>
    <language>zh-hans</language>
  </subtitles>
</item>

(since the actual content isn't inside the XML structure, using "xml:lang" 
seems a bit weird to me - but I'm no XML guru...)

Your application could consult an appropriate table to get reasonable lists 
of values for the language tags inside each of the sub-identifiers.....

> 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.

<distraction>actually there is no longer a tag for "serbocroatian" - it got 
officially deleted from the registry after the breakup of Yugoslavia...... 
so you've got to tag it as either Serbian or Croatian or both....
</distraction>

> 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.

Yep. We've already made that decision, so let's just embrace that concept 
wholeheartedly.......

                       Harald