From: Doug Ewell (dewell@adelphia.net)
Date: Sat Jul 03 2004 - 11:49:39 CDT
Jony Rosenne <rosennej at qsm dot co dot il> wrote:
> And with the availability of Unicode, I think the need for
> transliteration is fading. It seems that these schemes can only be
> used by people who know the transliterated script.
On the contrary, untransliterated (or untranscribed) text can only be
read by people who know the original script. Transliterations and
transcriptions at least give the Latin-script-only reader a fighting
chance to pronounce the text. (Without them, those of use who can't
read Arabic would have a real struggle reading today's news: Saddam
Hussein, Al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden, etc.)
The availability of Unicode means that scores of writing systems and
orthographies can be represented in computers, all at once,
unambiguously It doesn't mean that humans have become capable of
reading scripts they previously couldn't read.
Sorry if this wasn't what you meant.
-Doug Ewell
Fullerton, California
http://users.adelphia.net/~dewell/
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