Re: On the possibility of encoding some localizable sentences in plane 7 (from Re: On the possibility of encoding webdings in Unicode)

From: Peter Zilahy Ingerman, PhD (pzi@ingerman.org)
Date: Fri Jan 28 2011 - 10:14:54 CST

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    Monolingual? That many, eh?

    And as for simple sentences, try this one: "She made the blue robot
    fast.". Last time I counted I got over 100 different meanings in American.

    Peter Ingerman
    (Unicode lurker)

    On 2011-01-28 10:53, John Burger wrote:
    > As I believe I have said before, I think this is a nonsensical idea.
    > I do not know for sure, of course, but I would wager that anyone who
    > supports this idea has never had to perform translation, and is likely
    > monolingual.
    >
    > There are few, if any, sentences that, in every language AND IN EVERY
    > CONTEXT are always translated exactly the same way. Even such simple
    > things as "Thank you" have, for instance, multiple possible
    > translations in many languages, depending on the situation, the
    > speaker's gender, the recipient's age, etc. There is almost never one
    > and only one correct translation ESPECIALLY for the simple sentences
    > one might imagine going into such a database. These are exactly the
    > kind of utterance with the greatest ambiguity.
    >
    > - John Burger
    > MITRE
    >
    >
    >

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