From: Don Osborn (dzo@bisharat.net)
Date: Tue Oct 03 2006 - 20:40:29 CST
I tend to agree with what Mark and John are saying here. Do we need to have such additional descriptors beyond basic information on how to handle time/date, text and numbers (essentially) for a particular language/script/country? The way I understand it, there are a *lot* of “locale data” for various fundamental and attributed social and physical specifications (of which gender is only the first or one of the first to come to mind) conveyed in the languages themselves (and their dialects, dictionaries, slang, professional usage, poetics of speech, etc., etc.). And these may not need to be spelled out in CLDR at all.
Maybe I’m missing something here, but how would gender data facilitate localized interfaces in a way that specifying currency symbols, decimal markings or alphabet/sort order do? If it’s for something like a welcome page that, in a greeting in a particular language, needs to use a masculine or feminine forms, couldn’t that be written in the software if the language needs it? (By way of explanation: there are cases where, as a member of some online community, the welcome page in English might, when you log on, be programmed to display “Good morning” or whatever depending on the time of day, but in some other languages it might need a gender specific greeting – which it would know only by information one entered as part of becoming a member … but that’s data and not locale data isn’t it?).
Don
From: unicode-bounce@unicode.org [mailto:unicode-bounce@unicode.org] On Behalf Of Mark Davis
Sent: Tuesday, October 03, 2006 12:18 PM
To: John D. Burger
Cc: Unicode Discussion
Subject: Re: Should names for sexes be included into CLDR?
CLDR is not a multilingual glossary of arbitrary terms. It is designed around structure and data used for general software internationalization.
While one might have male vs female check-boxes on a website registration form, one might also have age ranges, income levels, pet preferences, magazines already subscribed to, occupations, seat preference, etc.; all dependent on the application in question, all just localization for the needs of that particular application.
Mark
On 10/3/06, John D. Burger <john@mitre.org> wrote:
Jukka K. Korpela wrote:
> Human sex is surely a data element that may need to be expressed in
> a localized manner.
> Wouldn't it be rather natural to include sex into the CLDR data
> format, initially populating it with data from the annex?
Lots of things need to be expressed in a localized manner. Is CLDR
intended to be a comprehensive translation dictionary?
Jon Hanna wrote:
> There's another question about recording this, do we just use
> adjectives, just nouns or adjectives, nouns and perhaps other terms
> (man, woman, boy, girl as some English examples)?
Exactly - this is a long road to start down.
- John D. Burger
MITRE
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