James Kass wrote:
> Indeed! Or, at least if we need a correct definition of
> an English word, we should consult an English dictionary.
> The web page cited by Mr. Constable is simply misleading, unless
> it were to be amended to clearly state "for the purposes of
> this and related documents..." these words mean &c.
well, the English dictionaries give usages of words in everyday language,
and that's fine. But in their usage as technical terms, the distinction between "transcription"
and "transliteration" (roughly along the lines of the http://www.elot.gr/tc46sc2/purpose.html page) seems to me to be a fairly well-established one, in the field of linguistics at least.
> No international body has any authority to alter the meaning of
> existing words in my language or any of our languages.
Sure, but we're dealing with a scholarly discipline's technical vocabulary here, and it's not such a bad idea in this case if computer people dealing with language adopt the usage of linguists, is it?
> what they call "transliteration" could easily be
> referred to as "reversible transliteration" in plain English,
> without 'breaking existing applications' like my dictionary.
You must understand: this isn't about "breaking existing applications", it's about a "higher-level protocol"! ;-)
Lukas Pietsch
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