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

From: John Burger (john@mitre.org)
Date: Fri Jan 28 2011 - 09:53:38 CST

  • Next message: Mark Leisher ♺: "Re: Localizable sentences (from Re: On the possibility of encoding webdings in Unicode)"

    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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