<INTERNET-DRAFT>M.T. Carrasco Benitez
<draft-carrasco-language-code.00.txt>
Expires 30 September 199831 March 1998

Codes for language transformation

Status of this Memo

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Distribution of this document is unlimited. Please send comments to the author at manuel.carrasco@emea.eudra.org. This document is intended to become an informational RFC, and its content is designed for adoption in other standards and specifications.

Overview and Rational

The [RFC1766] describes the language tags. In the present form, it does not allow to indicate language transformations such as transliteration. This memo is a proposition to allow such transformations.

Overview

This is a draft proposal to extend the RFC1766 to cover language transformations (transliteration/transcription/trans-anything) from one language (the source language) to another (the target language).

In this context, tranformation means that the source language is expressed in another way (e.g., in another alphabet) for people familiar with the target language. This is not translation. There can be many different transformation schemes between two languages.

The source language and the target language could be the same. In this case, it will be a transformation within the same language. For example, a transformation from English expressed with the Latin alphabet into English in Braille.

Question: Does it makes sense to include Braille transformation ?

Syntax

This is the proposed syntax:

ss-tran-tt-sss
where
ss Source language. Primary language tag. ISO 639 two character language code. Mandatory.
tran Transformation indicator. First subtag. Literal string tran. Mandatory.
tt Target language. Second subtag. ISO 639 two character language code. Optional. If missing, the target language is the same as the source language.
sss Transformation scheme. Second (if the target language is missing) or third subtag. Must be three or more characters to avoid confusion with the target language. Optional. If missing, the default transformation is applied.

Examples
fr-tran French to French with the default transformation (e.g., Braille).
el-tran-en Greek to English with the default transformation (e.g., some transliteration).
fr-tran-mybraille2 French to French with transformation mybraille2.
el-tran-en-mytran3 Greek to English with the transformation mytran3.

This syntax only requires registering tran with AINA.

Schemes

A scheme system is needed that defines:

Author's Address

Manuel Tomas CARRASCO BENITEZ
The European Agency for the Evaluation of Medicinal Products
7 Westferry Circus
Canary Wharf
London E14 4HB
U.K.

Phone: +44 171 418 8645
Email: manuel.carrasco@emea.eudra.org
URL: http://dragoman.org

References

[RFC1766]
Tags for the Identification of Languages, H. Alvestrand, March 1995.
Available at http://ds.internic.net/rfc/rfc1766.txt

This document is html format.
http://dragoman.org/winter/lanco.html