A proposed solution for descriptions

[John Cowan]

Debbie Garside scripsit:

> This would open the "flood gates" in my opinion.  I am sure there is
> both "currency and historical usage" for translation of most of the
> names in many a number of languages.  Bad move to add it just because
> it is an English translation.

I agree, particularly since it seems very important to the Ivoirian
government that the country be called "Cote d'Ivoire" in all languages,
and not a translation thereof.

> > It's important to keep in mind that when we start talking 
> > about ISO 639-3, there are some pairs of language names that 
> > differ only in diacritical marks.  For example, Arua and Aruá 
> > are two different languages.  In a case like this, we will 
> > not want to provide an ASCII fallback of any sort for Aruá, 
> > because that would give us two languages with the same name.
> 
> WRONG.  There will be one description for the first instance and two
> for the second. This is perfectly understood as a human or when being
> parsed so long as a written methodology is included within the standard.
> Remember what the alpha2/3 code is for.  I would suggest coming to
> some sort of tentative agreement on the records proposed by Doug and
> then tackling this with written rules in RFC3066ter.

The trouble will be that people will look up "Arua" and enter the
code for the other one, not realizing that there is a collision.
I don't know what to do about this, but it *is* a problem that will
have to be considered.

-- 
John Cowan   cowan at ccil.org    http://ccil.org/~cowan
If a soldier is asked why he kills people who have done him no harm, or a
terrorist why he kills innocent people with his bombs, they can always
reply that war has been declared, and there are no innocent people in an
enemy country in wartime.  The answer is psychotic, but it is the answer
that humanity has given to every act of aggression in history.  --Northrop Frye