Re: German XML Translation - first Draft

Hi Martin (et.al.)

 > A few points nevertheless:
 > 
 > The example at http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Legal/translation-example.html
 > manages to have a different background for the additions made due to the
 > translation. I would suggest that you do the same.

OK.

 > 
 > 
 > In http://www.mintert.com/xml/trans/REC-xml-19980210-de.html#2.12
 > 
 > >  <p xml:lang="de-DE">Ich hab' dich gern.</p>
 > >  <p xml:lang="de-CH">Ch'ha di g舐n.</p>
 > 
 > (My Japanese setup may have distorted the Umlauts a bit.)
 > 
 > This is a very cute example, and as a Swiss I very much appreciate
 > it, but it's probably wrong :-(. The problem lies in the question of
 > what de-CH exactly refers to. Does it refer to the Swiss variant
 > of standard German, which has differences to the German version
 > of standard German to a similar extent maybe as American and
 > British English are different, or does it refer to the Swiss
 > dialects of German (which are about as different from standard
 > German as Dutch)?


My target was to transform the example

	<p xml:lang="en-GB">What colour is it?</p>
	<p xml:lang="en-US">What color is it?</p>

into an example which is understood by German readers. Since there are no 
subcodes for German dialects registered with IANA, I could only use a 
language code as the first subcode segment.

My Swiss German isn't very good ;-) and I just found this example...


 > 
 > The example above assumes the later. But general use on computers
 > assumes the former. "de-CH" is routinely used for Swiss locales on
 > computers, which besides a different keyboard,... may include different
 > spell-checkers that don't use the sharp "s", and allow such differences
 > as "parkieren" instead of "parken". Similarly, in an Austrian version
 > ("de-AU"), words such as Ja"nner instead of Januar and Marille instead
 > of Aprikose would be used. But not many differences otherwise.
 > This distinction is probably much more useful, because there is much
 > more text in the Swiss variant of Standard German than in any of
 > the many Swiss dialects, and because if "de-CH" referred to the
 > Swiss dialects, to which one would it refer, and in what orthography?
 > That's not a problem for the Swiss variant of standard German, which
 > is well defined by Duden.


So the following would be a better example?

<p xml:lang="de-DE">In welcher Stra&szlig;e wohnst du?</p>
<p xml:lang="de-CH">In welcher Strasse wohnst du?</p>


(To prevent problems with you're Japanese setup I wrote the sharp s as a
character reference &szlig;)


This example is a bit closer to the original "color"/"colour" example.

 > 
 > 
 > > Diese deutsche ワbersetzung ist unter 
 > > http://www.mintert.com/xml/trans/REC-xml-19980210-de.html
 > > sowie unter !!!hier die W3C-Adresse!!! zu finden. Weitere
 >               ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
 > > Teile der XML-ワbersetzung sind (jetzt oder in Zukunft) unter
 > > http://www.mintert.com/xml/trans/ zu finden.
 > 
 > 
 > Above, you say "!!!here the W3C Address!!!". For the reasons I
 > explained earlier about the impossibility to use anything like
 > "original translation", the W3C currently (and most probably in
 > the future) also doesn't plan to put translations on its web
 > site. What we will indeed do, but what will still need a bit
 > more of work in the case of XML, is that we will reference your
 > translation.

Sorry, I misunderstood this. And the translation example mentioned above
(http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Legal/translation-example.html) has a
similar link:

----
This Japanese version translation is: 
       http://www.jis.org.jp/Pub/JIS_A_4002 
 and it can also be found at: 
       http://www.w3.org/TR/NOTE-PICSRules-980303j.html 
----

I will remove the link in our translation.



Thanks for your feedback, Martin!



Regards,

 Stefan.

+-----------------------------------------------------------+
  Stefan Mintert
       UniDo:    mintert@irb.informatik.uni-dortmund.de
       private:  stefan@mintert.com
       WWW:      http://www.informatik.uni-dortmund.de/‾sm/
+-----------------------------------------------------------+

        "let the music keep our spirits high..."

                                (Jackson Browne)

Received on Thursday, 26 March 1998 13:09:02 UTC