RE: International standards for various forms of profile data

David,
 
There is mailing list at groups.yahoo.com called "grcdi" that is perfect for
this kind of question.  They discuss international data management issues,
such as names, titles, addresses, postal codes, phone numbers, etc. as they
are used around the world.  It is mostly monitored by people who have to
sanitize, standardize, and merge international contact databases and people
who put up international web forms to gather this information in the first
place.  They have a real bead on these kinds of issues.
 
While I'm on the topic, let me suggest an interesting URL to get a feel for
the different requirements for international address formats (and name,
title, and company formats) in use around the world:
 
  http://www.afd.co.uk/internet/a2000/index.htm
<http://www.afd.co.uk/internet/a2000/index.htm> 
 
And here are some good links for general addressing issues:

  http://www.grcdi.nl/links.htm <http://www.grcdi.nl/links.htm>  

   http://www.grcdi.nl/linksoth.htm <http://www.grcdi.nl/linksoth.htm> 

Note to Carl: The *German word* for girls is neuter; *German girls* are, I
promise you, 110% female.  If you woke up next to one who was neuter, then
I'm guessing you had way too much to drink at Octoberfest !   :-)

Merle "Smart Ass" Tenney

-----Original Message-----
From: Carl W. Brown [mailto:cbrown@xnetinc.com]
Sent: Thursday, August 30, 2001 12:59 PM
To: David_Possin@i2.com; Kremena Gotcheva
Cc: www-international@w3.org
Subject: RE: International standards for various forms of profile data


David,
 
Part of the problem is categorizing the data you need.  For example you
categorize gender for English and German.  To be complete you might want to
consider that girls in German are neuter(I don't know of other languages
that do this) .
 
Tokenizing addresses for say US, Russian and Japanese addresses is not a
simple task.   Besides a letter for say Venezuela to me would be:
 
Carl W. Brown
X.Net, Inc.
3452 Shangri-La Rd.
Lafayette, CA 94549
EE.UU.A
 
International mail requires hybrid addresses.  Not an easy task.
 
Carl
 
 

-----Original Message-----
From: www-international-request@w3.org
[mailto:www-international-request@w3.org]On Behalf Of David_Possin@i2.com
Sent: Thursday, August 30, 2001 12:32 PM
To: Kremena Gotcheva
Cc: www-international@w3.org
Subject: Re: International standards for various forms of profile data



I will be doing what I can for en_US and de_DE, these being my 2 native
locales. Currently I am just collecting whatever data I can find in the
areas I listed below. I plan to design a definitive requirement for our
March SW release by mid-December, that should give me enough time for a good
research and compilation of data. I do plan to host the results on a web
site when they are finished, notifying the members of this list of its
presence. I might even design it so that members can update the tables for
their locale online. 

The tables will look like this: 

table                                lang_table 
data_id        data_type                 locale                data_std
data_long        data_short        data_description 

0001        gender                        en_US                male
male                m                male gender 
                                de_DE                männl.
männlich        m                männliches Geschlecht 
0002        gender                        en_US                female
female                f                female gender 
                                de_DE                weibl.
weiblich                w                weibliches Geschlecht 

Not all fields might be required for each instance, but so far I was able to
store all locale specific information in this format. 

Thanks for your cooperation, Kremena 

- Dave 




	"Kremena Gotcheva" <infom@bcci.bg> 


08/30/01 01:08 PM 


        
        To:        <David_Possin@i2.com> 
        cc:         
        Subject:        Re: International standards for various forms of
profile data	



OK, I can do my best as far as Bulgarian is concerned but please share the
results, e.g. publishing on this mailing list or in a personal mailing. I am
also working on a project that is likely to involve a lot of i18n. 
  
How soon do you need the data? Can you mail me a 'dummy' list of all details
you have so far found out you need, to give me something to think on? 
  
Much success, 
Kremena Gotcheva 
Bulgarian Chamber of Commerce an Industry 
----- Original Message ----- 
From:  <mailto:David_Possin@i2.com> David_Possin@i2.com 
To:  <mailto:www-international@w3> 
Sent: Thursday, August 30, 2001 8:47 PM
Subject: International standards for various forms of profile data


Hello everybody, 

I am currently working the i18n/l10n requirements for creating and
maintaining company and person profile data for our ecommerce framework. Due
to the large diversity of our customers we want to offer standard base data
for international support in all supported languages. This was originally
done by our customer in their respective local offices, but the magnitude is
getting overwhelming and our support staff cannot keep up with their
requests. 

I am looking for resources for specific profile data information in as many
languages/locales/cultures/regions as possible, preferably backed up by
national standards organizations. Here are the major areas I have started to
research: 

*	Common Honorifics, Salutations, Titles; their placement rules and
correct usage (regular expressions) 

*	Gender and Marriage Status specifications (some countries do not
allow divorces, but may allow the term separated or legally separated) 

*	Surnames and Additions (like Henry III or the Third) 

*	Usage of Maiden Names and other genealogical information (I remember
Spanish heritage listing as a nightmare: uuuu y vvvv y wwww y xxxxx and so
on) 

*	Religions and Sub-Groups (like Protestant, Lutheran or Reformed) 

*	Legal business identifications (like in Germany: AG, KG, GmbH, GmbH
& Co. KG, etc.) 

There are probably dozens more parts of information that should be used to
be complete, there are probably additional fields that don't even apply to a
Western culture. I would appreciate getting as much info as I can, I will
compile a list and send it out to the group once it looks like I have all. I
am especially interested in native standards in the respective languages
Thanking all in advance, 

David Possin
International QA Engineer (i18n & l10n)
i2 Technologies - Austin 

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