Re: Controlled Vocabularies Aid Translation and Content Management

Karl --

Interesting numbers.

But surely, the key point is that though many US residents speak Spanish,
Chinese and so forth at home, they mostly speak at least some English at
work.

The international air traffic control system comes to mind -- I believe that
all communication is in English.

However, that  still leaves some room for misunderstandings.  I recall a
story about a European pilot holding over JFK.  He said calmly several times
to air traffic control that he was running out of fuel.  They took no notice
till it was almost too late, because they expected something like that to be
shouted in urgent tones, perhaps with a few expletives.

So, how is this relevant to w3c?  Well maybe there should be a set of tags
such as <red>I'm running out of fuel</red> and <green>I can see a nice
sunset from up here</green>.  Perhaps such tags already exist?

                            Cheers,   -- Adrian


Internet Business Logic (R)
Executable open vocabulary English
Online at www.reengineeringllc.com
Shared use is free

Adrian Walker
Reengineering
Phone: USA 860 830 2085



On 10/3/06, Karl Dubost <karl@w3.org> wrote:
>
>
> Controlled Vocabularies Aid Translation and Content Management
>
> [[[
> One conclusion is that people can easily be confused by the multiple
> meanings and synonyms that words can have, as well as by complex
> sentence structures. But if we look closer at the users of technical
> information, we can also conclude that in today's world of
> globalization our audience has changed, and we need to adapt to that.
>
> If we look at the readers of our documentation around the world, we
> see that often English is not their native language. This
> (surprisingly) also applies to the United States. Although English is
> the main language spoken in the United States, recent studies suggest
> that this will most likely change in the not too distance future.
> Much of the world's population is already multi-lingual, and the
> United States is following suit. In 2003, the Census Bureau reported
> that nearly one American in five speaks a language other than English
> at home, with Spanish leading, followed by Chinese. To learn more
> about langauges spoken in the US, see the Census Bureau report,
> Percent of People 5 Years and Over Who Speak a Language Other Than
> English at Home.
> ]]] -- Required Reading | The Rockley Bulletin
>          http://rockleybulletin.com/requiredreading_comments.php?
> id=167_0_5_0_C
>         Tue, 03 Oct 2006 23:59:39 GMT
>
>
> --
> Karl Dubost - http://www.w3.org/People/karl/
> W3C Conformance Manager, QA Activity Lead
>    QA Weblog - http://www.w3.org/QA/
>       *** Be Strict To Be Cool ***
>
>
>
>