From: Kenneth Whistler (kenw@sybase.com)
Date: Mon Nov 18 2002 - 21:36:48 EST
> > These is completely comparable to the fact that my local
> > English-language newspaper doesn't need a German language tag
> > to write Gerhard Schroeder.
>
> How about a multilingual newspaper?
What of a multilingual newspaper?
Take a hypothetical instance of a German/English newspaper,
which presented all the news twice -- once in German, and
again in English. So the German side says, for example:
Nach einem 19 Monate dauernden Stillstand im Nahost-Friedensprozeß
und einem zähen achttägigen Verhandlungsmarathon bei Washington
haben sich Israels Ministerpräsident Netanjahu und der Vorsitzende
der palästinensischen Autonomiebehörde, Arafat, in einer langem
Sitzung in der Nacht zum Freitag auf ein Interimsabkommen über
,,Land für Sicherheit`` geeignigt...
Then the English side would say:
After a 19 month pause in the Middle East peace process... etc.
In such a case, it would make sense to tag the *entire* German
text as German, and the *entire* English text as English (and
it would probably be done so in terms of markup in any case).
But it would make no particular sense to start digging into
the material and tagging "Washington" as English (although it
is) and "Israel" and "Netanjahu" as Hebrew (although they
are) and "Arafat" as Arabic (although it is). Embedded quotations
of untranslated material, if they occur, perhaps.
Well, Chinese and Japanese work the same way. You do whatever
adaptation of the names are required for your local language,
and then you present them as expected to the reader of *that*
language. So, in the above example, "Netanjahu" for the German
reader, "Netanyahu" for the English reader -- but in neither
case presented in the original Hebrew. (In fact, for German,
you will also commonly find it spelled "Netanyahu" -- but you
won't find it in Hebrew.)
--Ken
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