Re: New article for REVIEW: Working with composite messages

Martin Duerst wrote:
> 
> Hello Richard,
> 
> Some small comments: An example is not consistent ("The ... has been
> enabled." vs. "The ... has been disabled.").
> 
> "... improve message consistency, and optimize memory.": I'd
> put at least a 'may' before "optimize memory". This is way less
> of an issue than a few years ago.
> 
> " If the alternative string stapler options were used at runtime, the
> word has would be incorrect": No need to use conditional; the example
> as shown beforehand suggests that "stapler options" is actually
> being used.
> 
> "However, since there is now only a single string containing the word
> has, it cannot be translated in more than one way.": Difficult to
> understand:
> no need to translate, because the problem exists already in English.
> This problem is reinforced by the start of the next paragraph, which
> brings up other languages, and therefore suggests that the sentence
> in question is really only about English. It seems that in these two
> paragraphs, two different issues (the problem already being there
> in English, and the problem of translation) have been mixed too
> much. I suggest cleaning things up by first only talking about
> English, and then talking about other languages, translations,...
> 
> As for the question below, I clearly think 'topic' is better than
> 'subject', but I'm not happy with 'predicate' as well as with
> 'comment'. Unfortunately, I don't have a better suggestion (yet).

At least the terms "topic" and "comment" are established in some
linguistic analysis, see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topic-prominent_language , based on the
so-called "prague school" of linguistics, see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prague_School . In that context, they
meaning is very close to what is expressed in Richard's article.

Regards, Felix.

> 
> Regards,   Martin.
> 
> At 02:43 06/03/25, Richard Ishida wrote:
>>
>>Folks,
>>
>>I was about to write this note to John Cowan, but began having doubts.
>>Topic-comment doesn't sound too bad today, for some reason.  Let's just
> do a
>>sense check.  Who prefers subject-predicate, and who prefers
> topic-comment?
>>
>>http://www.w3.org/International/articles/composite-messages/
>>
>>I'm afraid to say, I'm leaning on the topic-comment side at the moment.
> I do
>>like 'topic', and I've always worried a little about 'predicate' - may
> sound
>>too technical for some.
>>
>>What do you think?
>>
>>RI
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>Hello John,
>>
>>Thanks for your comment.
>>
>>We discussed this during the GEO telecon this week and, while we agree
> that
>>linguistically-speaking topic is much better, we felt that in 'layman's
>>terms' we couldn't find a better suggestion than subject-predicate.  On
> the
>>other hand, we are not overly enthusiastic about that either.
>>
>>The upshot is that we will leave as is for now, but if someone comes up
> with
>>another solution or a persuasive argument, we may change it in the future.
>>
>>Cheers,
>>RI
>>
>>
>>============
>>Richard Ishida
>>Internationalization Lead
>>W3C (World Wide Web Consortium)
>>
>>http://www.w3.org/People/Ishida/
>>http://www.w3.org/International/
>>http://people.w3.org/rishida/blog/
>>http://www.flickr.com/photos/ishida/
>>
>>
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: John Cowan [mailto:cowan@ccil.org]
>>> Sent: 16 February 2006 21:18
>>> To: Richard Ishida
>>> Cc: www-international@w3.org
>>> Subject: Re: New article for REVIEW: Working with composite messages
>>>
>>> Richard Ishida scripsit:
>>>
>>> > This article provides looks at design and development
>>> practices that
>>> > can cause major problems for translation. Designers must be very
>>> > careful about how they split up and reuse text on-screen
>>> because the
>>> > linguistic differences between languages can lead to real headaches
>>> > for localizers and may in some cases make a reasonable translation
>>> > impossible to achieve.
>>>
>>> I suggest that the "subject-predicate" terminology be
>>> replaced by "topic-comment" terminology throughout.  The term
>>> "subject" is already defined as "topic" in the text.  If the
>>> term "comment" is thought confusing to developers, it could
>>> be replaced by "claim" or "value".
>>> "Subject" and "predicate" are already highly overloaded in
>>> subtly different senses from the way they are used here.
>>>
>>> --
>>> Even a refrigerator can conform to the XML      John Cowan
>>> Infoset, as long as it has a door sticker       cowan@ccil.org
>>> saying "No information items inside".           http://www.ap.org
>>>         --Eve Maler
>>> http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
>>>
>