Re: Localizable Sentences Experiment

From: verdy_p (verdy_p@wanadoo.fr)
Date: Tue Apr 21 2009 - 17:11:39 CDT

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    Is all this thread really necessary?

    I can't see any relation with Unicode, it's not even a proposal and not intended to sovle any issue. It's not to
    Unicode to handle the problem of "localization" which here is badly used when it is thought to just be translation.
    There already exists simple solutions that work very well for translation and that are much easier to implement and
    support, without needing any central authority. In addition we all know that translations are not definitive, and
    there's no one-to-one mapping across languages for similar concepts.

    A single codepoint cannot be used to track all possible usages of a sentence in a given language, and if these
    characters had to be encoded, it would be impossible to adapt them to other languages without very complex (if not
    impossible) contextual interpretations (and lots of assumptions that arenot transported with the encoded text
    itself).

    If the encoded item becomes then only usable in a single language, it defeats the intended purpose of facilitating
    the lcoalization of softwares. It will be much simpler to represent the sentences with their orignal text. In
    addition it will return to the principles of separation between character encoding and languages. Standard
    codepoints need to be language-neutral, and all the proposals seen are definitely not language-neutral, and not
    even culture-neutral (it depends on the intended audience).

    "William_J_G Overington":
    > On Monday 20 April 2009, Magnus Bodin wrote:
    > > AND HERE ARE THE RESULTS FROM THE SWEDISH JURY:
    > > NOTE: UMLAUTS AHEAD.
    > > NOTE: LAST ADDITION NEEDS CODEPOINT
    >
    > ...
    >
    > > U+F9XXX LOCALIZABLE SENTENCE BEST REGARDS,
    > >
    > > Vänliga hälsningar,
    >
    > Thank you for providing the translations.
    >
    > I suggest the following mapping.
    >
    > U+F900E LOCALIZABLE SENTENCE BEST REGARDS,
    >
    > William Overington
    >
    > 20 April 2009
    >
    >
    >
    >
    >
    >



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