Accomodating ESL speakers

[todd glassey]

Avri - the problem is with creating a homogeneous set of Intellectual
Properties that can all be evaluated equally as a standard, and the issues
of opening that to multiple languages complicates the matter terribly. I do
understand that the largest part of the world speaks something other than
English, but it (English) has been the mainstay of the IETF's and the
Internet Standards disclosure models from day one.

To bring into that any other languages complicates the qualifying of
standards tremendously since then the Editors MUST be fluent in those
languages from a technical sense so that they can see for instance, how a
French  or Hebrew update tracks the original English printing on RFCXXXX for
instance, and that will clearly increase the complexity and cost of
processing standards as well as slow the publishing process down
tremendously, oh and it also opens the Editors to commercial liabilities for
any screwups therein.

I would because of these simple facts propose that for now, that English
remain the official filing language until such time as the IESG can formally
afford or get interpretive services as part of its operations model.


Todd Glassey

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "avri" <avri at apocalypse.org>
To: <problem-statement at alvestrand.no>
Sent: Tuesday, July 08, 2003 4:54 AM
Subject: Re: Accomodating ESL speakers



On måndag, jul 7, 2003, at 10:39 Canada/Eastern, Dave Crocker wrote:

> As a community of individuals, we are grotesquely insensitive to these
> participants. We speak much too fast, and often in incomplete
> sentences.
> We use idioms all the time. We get impatient when someone requests that
> we repeat ourselves.
>
> And then, of course, there is the dominant "American" style of
> interactions, which can most kindly be described as wildly different
> from what is normal in most other countries, especially for formal
> situations like a standards meeting.
>
>

i personally agree completely. having spent the last few years working
outside the US  i found i was guilty of much of that.  and still am to
some extent.

our entire tirade against slideware - especially wordy slideware - is
part of that.  before going to live outside the US, i would be happy
with slides that contained a picture or two.  now i have learned that
if i want non-native english speakers to understand my presentation, i
should include lots of words explaining my point.  something that is
somewhat frowned upon at the ietf.

a.