Re: Examples of language changes in websites

Hallo Jens,

You wrote:
>Why? Making clear that 'email' is English, or 'Nachricht' ist German?
Does
it make sense? -- How? Visually highlighting it to irritate users once
more
when visiting an almost colored site? Semantically pronouncing it to
complicate
author's work and to allow the desired effect deflagrate?<

To refer to email as an English word is in Dutch very comfortable for
screenreaders because we use  the word email (spoken out as a french
word) for a sort of iron. The official Dutch word for email is just
e-mail (electronic mail) and not email.

On the german wai-list has already been discussed that everything that
is not included in your own language officially  must be marked up.
Sitemap is not an official word  in German or Dutch and can be
pronounced by screenreaders in Dutch as sietemap (ie as ea in sea ,just
like bietensap or fietstas). Also some german screenreaders seem to
pronounce sitemap as sietemap when not marked up as an english word in a
german site. That can be very confusing and may produce a big
accessibility problem in understanding the content of a website.

Dutch has an official wordlist approved by the governments of the
Netherlands and Belgian Flandern, is officially called Woordenlijst
Nederlandse Taal, but every-one calls it het "groene boekje"  (green
book)  because the color is green. I always use this list for my
websites. When I can not find a word in it, I mark up the word with the
xml:lang attribute. The word cadeaushoppen is a word that I read for the
first time on this list, I don't even know that this word exists.

Besites I never use the word sitemap in my Dutch sites, but the Dutch
equivalent Inhoudsopgave and in a german website Inhaltsverzeichnis.

Cheers
Ineke van der Maat

Received on Thursday, 4 December 2003 07:34:00 UTC