RE: Looking for transcription or transliteration standards latin- >arabic

From: Mike Ayers (mike.ayers@tumbleweed.com)
Date: Tue Jul 06 2004 - 14:26:04 CDT

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    > From: unicode-bounce@unicode.org [mailto:unicode-bounce@unicode.org]On
    > Behalf Of Anto'nio Martins-Tuva'lkin
    > Sent: Saturday, July 03, 2004 7:28 AM

    > On 2004.07.02, 21:53, Mike Ayers <mike.ayers@tumbleweed.com> wrote:
    >
    > >> On the other hand, maybe "Ha Tinh" is just lazy typography.
    > >
    > > From National Geographic? Medoubts. This is a deliberate removal
    > > of the diacritics unfamiliar to English readers, and is a
    > > traditional way to present foreign words.
    >
    > It is lazy typography, then. "Deliberate", "traditional" and lazy. ;-)

            No. "Lazy" implies not doing something to avoid doing the work.
    This is not the case here. It's an accessibility issue.

    > From: unicode-bounce@unicode.org [mailto:unicode-bounce@unicode.org]On
    > Behalf Of Anto'nio Martins-Tuva'lkin
    > Sent: Saturday, July 03, 2004 12:37 PM

    > Pray tell, why so? Is the letter "â" an usuperable obstacle for those
    > who know only the letter "a"?...

            For some of us, at least, yes. The diacritic implies, by its very
    existence, that it has meaning, but I do not know what that meaning is, so I
    am stymied. Removing the diacritics yields a strange word, but one which I
    can probably absorb.

    > Can't the "remove diacriticals" action be performed in the reader's
    > brain, instead of in the typesetter's office?

            Again, for at least some of us (and I suspect this is a majority of
    the population unfamiliar with a given diacritic), simply ignoring
    diacritics is not an option, just as ignoring letters would not be.

    /|/|ike



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