RE: Examples of language changes in websites

Surely the deciding factors are:
1. context
2. audience
 
Firstly, any ambiguous words should be marked up - not only in the
accessibility sense but where those words are not core to the language
in question - and for all possible user types. The markup should be:
<foreign>...</foreign> or some such meaningful tag.
 
To decide if a word or phase is foreign to the language context it is 
written in, one criteria would be to see if the author's spell and grammar
checker picks it up. That's, of course, if the author does not know
themselves that the word is "foreign" [in the broadest sense of that word].
 
So: looking at the ambiguity of /résumé/
 
1. Context:
When a user has their browser set to "french" then all the french words
around our "ambiguous" word should guide how a screen reader reads the
"ambiguous" word - i.e. as regular french
 
Conversely, "le weekend" is pronounced with French intonation by French
people.
 
Where /résumé/ appears in an English language context then by default
the local language intonation should apply e.g. English.
 
2. Audience:
When /résumé/ appears in a non-French language context then the audience
rule applies. 
There needs to be not only a language setting but and internationalization
setting that says: "pronounce borrowed foreign words with their
"native/foreign" or "local" intontation.
 
Finally, usually as a block of text is translated from one language to
another the foreign/borrowed/ambiguous words remain the same.
This situation is only trumped when the context language is the same as the
ambiguous word or there is a more commonly used local word in the context 
language that better captures the sense of the word for the context
audience.
 
[i]US English > [ii]UK English > [iii]French > [iv]German
 
[i]    Where is your résumé?
[ii]    Where is your CV?
[iii]   Ou est ton curriculum vitae? [missing accents]
[iv]   Wo ist dein Lebenslauf?
 

Thanks, 
Gordon 
--------------------- 
Gordon Montgomery 
Usability Manager 
+508 253 2405 

 

-----Original Message-----
From: Kerstin Goldsmith [mailto:kerstin.goldsmith@oracle.com] 
Sent: Thursday, December 04, 2003 5:15 PM
To: Craddock, Michael P
Cc: Yvette P. Hoitink; Doyle Burnett; w3c-wai-gl@w3.org
Subject: Re: Examples of language changes in websites


I think we need to bring this back out to the question "in question," though
- here, we have only solved one small problem.  Can we legislate this kind
of change?  And, if yes, or if no, how do we answer Richard Ishida's
question: what constitutes language change that MUST be marked up, and what
constitutes language change that SHOULD be marked up, etc.

-kerstin

Craddock, Michael P wrote:


We've run into terminology issues here at Boeing, not as a screen reader
problem but as a usability issue, and have recently switched from "sitemap"
(one word, which is common) to "text index" which we found more commonly
used and descriptive. Maybe this small change could help? 



Thank you,

michaelcraddock

The Boeing Company

multimediadesignengineer

p 312.544.2931 | c 312.371.8134 | f 312.544.2082 | w www.boeing.com/
<http://www.boeing.com/> 



"doog si efil"-mirror me



-----Original Message-----

From: Yvette P. Hoitink [mailto:y.p.hoitink@heritas.nl
<mailto:y.p.hoitink@heritas.nl> ] 

Sent: Thursday, December 04, 2003 1:23 PM

To: 'Doyle Burnett'; w3c-wai-gl@w3.org <mailto:w3c-wai-gl@w3.org> 

Subject: RE: Examples of language changes in websites





In Dutch, the word 'sitemap' (one word) is used a lot. This is yet another

example of the Dutch habit of glueing words together, which is gramatically

correct in Dutch. This is so normal for me I didn't even recognize this as

not being entirely English...



Dutchmen pronounce 'sitemap' with the English pronounciation. It is not

(yet) in the Dutch standard wordlist. Just like the word 'cadeaushoppen',

this is another example of a word whose language cannot be identified within

the current HTML standards since it's neither Dutch nor English.



Yvette Hoitink

CEO Heritas, Enschede, The Netherlands

E-mail: y.p.hoitink@heritas.nl <mailto:y.p.hoitink@heritas.nl> 



  

-----Original Message-----

From: w3c-wai-gl-request@w3.org <mailto:w3c-wai-gl-request@w3.org>  

[mailto:w3c-wai-gl-request@w3.org <mailto:w3c-wai-gl-request@w3.org> ] On
Behalf Of Doyle Burnett

Sent: donderdag 4 december 2003 20:00 



I believe the term is site map (two words) and yes, if 

written as a single word, sitemap - screen readers will not 

pronounce the word as would be desired.  



Doyle





On 12/4/03 8:17 AM, "Kynn Bartlett"  <mailto:kynn@idyllmtn.com>
<kynn@idyllmtn.com> wrote:



    

On Thursday, December 4, 2003, at 04:44 AM, Ineke van der 

      

Maat wrote:

    

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).

        

English screenreaders sometimes have said "sigh tuh map", for this 

word, rather than "site map".



--Kynn