--------------
http://www.lonelyplanet.com/destinations/south_east_asia/myanmar/
"Burma became Myanmar in 1989 after the State Law and
Order Restoration Council decided that the old name implied
the dominance of Burmese culture; the Burmese are just one
of the many ethnic groups in the country..."
----------------
An interesting site with writings from various people
favoring either "Burma" or "Myanmar" suggests that
Burma and Myanmar are separate words with different
etymologies.
http://ffmemorial.hypermart.net/burma_or_myanmar.html
-----------------
There is apparently some controversy about this, which is
beside the point. Perhaps Cambodia would make a better
example?
Ever read a technical paper in a field not your own, but a field
which may be of interest or related to your field? Maybe you'd
have to read it a second or third time (or more) before eventually
beginning to understand the message.
Does trade jargon (the technical language in a particular field) exist
to clarify a trade, or is its purpose more to exclude anyone not
part of the "inner circle"?
Technical writing by techies for techies is a bit of a peeve for me
(in case this isn't already evident). If we need to make distinctions
and it is possible to make these distinctions using plain language,
don't we reach more people with such plain language?
I've often wondered about this with regards to subjects like
programming languages. Is this practice (trade jargon) unique
to English? In other words, does a Hindi speaker wishing to
learn, for example, the "C" programming language have any
advantage over the English speaker because the "C" programming
instructions in Hindi are in 'plain-Hindi' rather than 'tech-speak'?
Quoting from "McCormick on Evidence Third Edition" (1984):
"In cases where privity in the strict sense does not exist
between a person suing for injuries and his administrator
suing for death caused thereby, identity of interest is
advanced as a basis for admitting in the later case
testimony given in the former."
(from footnote 12 on page 765, a random selection)
And we all thought "privity" and "identity of interest"
were synonyms. <smiley>
Well, unless someone comes out with "Rules of Evidence for
Dummies", I suppose it would be necessary to hire a lawyer.
We need precision, sure, but clarity is important too.
Let's try the phrase from the "purpose.html" page quoted
earlier again:
> "It is indispensable in that it permits the univocal
> transmission of a written message between two
> countries using different writing systems or
> exchanging a message the writing of which is
> different from their own."
Or, to paraphrase:
'It's needed because it makes straightforward message
exchange possible between groups which use different
writing systems.'
By the way, "univocal" is a word, after all. It's in a bigger,
hardback Webster's and means "having one voice", just as its
roots suggest. I'd mistakenly assumed that the author was
going for "unequivocal" and had made a typo. Shucks.
John Cowan wrote:
> ... In transliteration, we
> are mapping one script to another in a language-independent way.
> In transcription, we are mapping the writing conventions of one
> language to those of another.
This is clear enough and precise. It's also concise in that it condenses
much of the verbose page "purpose.html" down to two sentences.
The reason it makes me uncomfortable is that these definitions
don't match the standard meanings of the words as contained in
dictionaries. I'm afraid to suggest alternatives like "machine
transliteration" and "phonetic transcription", though, because
they are a bit cumbersome and would possibly only add to the
confusion.
Peter Constable wrote:
> True, though of course they do have the authority to
> say, "In the context of our standards we use term x to mean X."
(and, in a different letter)
> ...it is my impression that many people use the term
> "transliteration" in a broader sense than the strict definition
> defined by TC 46. That appears to be the case for the help file
> associated with the ICU demo, which defines transliteration as,
> "the general process of converting characters from one particular
> script to another one".
So, if words are to be re-defined, let's assure that they are
explicitly re-defined and that these re-definitions are
accessible. Meanwhile, when someone uses the terms in the
'broader sense' (id est: dictionary definition), please let's not
chide them for it.
Best regards,
James Kass.
----- Original Message -----
From: "John Cowan" <cowan@mercury.ccil.org>
To: "James Kass" <jameskass@worldnet.att.net>
Cc: "Unicode List" <unicode@unicode.org>; "Lukas Pietsch" <pietsch@mail.uni-freiburg.de>; "J M Sykes" <mike.sykes@acm.org>;
<webmaster@elot.gr>
Sent: Wednesday, July 04, 2001 9:23 PM
Subject: Re: Unicode transliterations (and other operations)
> James Kass scripsit:
>
> > Does the vocabulary make things clearer or cause confusion?
> > If we need to distinguish between reversible script conversion
> > and irreversible script conversion, could we not simply say
> > "reversible script conversion" and so forth?
>
> No, that does not capture the distinction. In transliteration, we
> are mapping one script to another in a language-independent way.
> In transcription, we are mapping the writing conventions of one
> language to those of another.
>
> Handy example: the name of the country written "Myanmar" (in
> transliteration) is pronounced ['b@m@]. This was transcribed
> into (British) English as "Burma".
>
> Of course, to represent the pronunciation I am using an ASCII
> transliteration of IPA!
>
>
> --
> John Cowan cowan@ccil.org
> One art/there is/no less/no more/All things/to do/with sparks/galore
> --Douglas Hofstadter
>
>
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