Re: Character name translations

On 12/20/2012 7:26 AM, Leif Halvard Silli wrote:
> Andreas Prilop, Thu, 20 Dec 2012 15:41:28 +0100 (CET):
>> On Thu, 20 Dec 2012, Jukka K. Korpela wrote:
>>
>>> http://www.ling.helsinki.fi/filt/info/mes2/
>> Unicode names have certain restrictions (capital ASCII letters, etc).
>> This Finnish list even uses non-ASCII characters but sticks to
>> capital letters. Why no small letters if non-ASCII letters are allowed?
>>
>> Which characters could be used for a Russian translation?
>> Cyrillic letters?
>> Only capital letters? If so — why?
> My impression is that Unicode character names are limited to - in order
> of priority:
>
> 1. language (en-US)
> 2. character set (US-ASCII)
> 3. uppercase

Language
Letters + digits + some punctuation
UPPERCASE
>
> What is the basis for the choice of uppercase? The probable answer
> might be that it "sticks out". It makes the name appear as code rather than ordinary words (which could thus lead to mistakes: Is it a word or a code?
>
> The same way of thinking *plus* a desire to "look like Unicode", could justify why translations in to e.g. Finnish and Russian would apply the same rules.
If you take the Unicode character names in the context of OTHER
information about the character, as presented in the Unicode character
nameslist (code charts) for example, then being able to distinguish the
formal names (UPPER CASE) from informal aliases (lower/mixed case) is
very handy.

In my other message, I made clear that I think translations of just the
names is a lot less useful than translation of the full information
presented in the code charts, which includes block (and therefore
script) names, annotations and listing of alternate names by which these
characters are known to ordinary users.

If your language uses a bicameral script, then the easiest way is to
follow the same typographical conventions (or analogous ones) as the
original text.

A./

PS: some languages use punctuation in forming words, If avoiding such
use would make the names appear artificially restricted, such use might
be allowed in addition to HYPHEN-MINUS for such a language.

PPS: ideally, the translated character names obey the same uniqueness
under analogous 'loose matching" rules as the original character names,
and where formally published by a standards organization as 'national'
version of 10646, one would expect similar guarantees for name stability.
Received on Thu Dec 20 2012 - 10:19:51 CST