RE: Transliteration

At 11:37 19.10.98 +0100, Carrasco Benitez Manuel wrote:
>Trying to re-center the discussion:
>
> 1) The objective is to find a way to tag the
>    "language transformation".
>
> 2) "Language transformation" is expressing
>     a (source) language in another form with
>     some relation to a (target) second language.
>     Tradicionally, transliteration (transformation
>     of writing) or transcription (transformation
>     of sound).
>  
>     It is not translation; the text is always in
>     the source language, but somehow transformed.

In this case, I would seriously doubt that the set of names
of languages is an useful second identifier; for example, the
Pinyin and new-chinese rules for latinizing of Chinese are
very different (Peking vs Beijing), but neither bears much
relation to a single language except Chinese.

>    *Warning*: This is a mine field and the
>     discussion can go for ever.

Yes :-)
>
> 3) The reason for proposing the extension
>     of RFC-1766 is because:
>
>      3.1) It does *not*  break RFC-1766.

If you regard the data as a "dialect" of the original language,
it may indeed be possible to fit it within the RFC 1766 mindset.
There have been proposals in the past to encode within RFC 1766
the various scripts in which a language is commonly written, such
as Arabic, Cyrillic and Latin script for some of the former Soviet
republics' languages.

But the specific scheme put forward, with its required "tran" tag,
use of language as second discriminator, and nonregistered schemes,
is not what I would call the "Right Thing".
To use your language above, it "feels" wrong.

                        Harald


-- 
Harald Tveit Alvestrand, Maxware, Norway
Harald.Alvestrand@maxware.no

Received on Monday, 19 October 1998 18:15:58 UTC