tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Aug 13 03:35:48 1996

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Re: other language pages at KLI Website

"Dr. Maciej St. Zieba" <[email protected]> writes:
\ I post this text to the tlhIngan-Hol mailing list, although originally
\ intended only to Lawrence, 
I don't think this is an appropriate topic for extended discussion on
this list; this is not a KLI public-relations forum, but a place to
discuss tlhIngan Hol.  I'm posting this reply to the list, but I think
any further discussion should be taken off-line into private email, or
perhaps a smaller list of those involved in producing the translations.

\ 1. Now in its fifth year of operation,
\ 
\ In both Norwegian and German you have 4 and not 5. Which year did the KLI
\ come into existence?
The Norwegian, at least, reads "Now four years old".  That is equivalent to
"Now in its fifth year of operation" - an entity begins its fifth year
on the day that it turns four years old.

By the way, the HTML entity code for a 'u' with an umlaut is &uuml;
the semicolon marks the end of the code.

\ I would also like to to inform you, that in Europe we are taught of 6
\ continents only, not 7, in our world (I don't know how many of them are
\ there in Qo'noS). Therefore I have translated as: 30 countries in all 5
\ continents. (meaning: the inhabited ones). If you disagree, look at the
\ Olympic flag with its 5 circles for 5 continents.
I *believe* that the Olympic flag's five rings date back to the
original Greek games and were reinterpreted for the modern era, but in
any case the inhabited continents only fit into 5 because they group
North and South America into one ring (the red one in the full-color flag).

\ 6. mythos that has permeated popular culture and spread around the globe.
\ 
\ I have added: "North-American" popular culture, as I doubt it means anything
\ else, and I think it should be done so in the other language versions.
The Star Trek mythos has permeated far more than just North American popular
culture; I know rabid Trekkies in Germany and devoted fans in Norway.

\ 9. utilizing blind peer review, registered with the Library of Congress, and
\ 
\ I am sorry, but I haven't found the term "blind peer review" in any of my
\ English dictionaries (Concise Oxford, Heritage International and Harrap's
\ Practical) so I don't know what it does mean and how to translate it.
It's a process used by scientific periodicals.  Each submission is *reviewed*
for correctness, appropriateness, etc. by the author's *peers*.  The
review is *blind* because the identity of the author is not revealed to
the reviewers.

\ If the text in any language has any "special" lettres - why is it shown
\ without them at all (examples: Norwegian, German and French)? 
I don't understand what you're asking here.  The Norwegian, at least,
*does* include the special characters - those '&' codes.  What do you
mean?

I don't find the -x substitution in Esperanto horrible.  The whole point
is to make it unambiguous.  Since there is no 'x' in the Esperanta alfabeto,
it's obvious that 'cx' refers to the c with a circumflex, whereas a 'ch' could
be mistaken for a 'c' followed by an 'h'.   X was chosen rather than, say,
'^' because the '^' character does not appear in all character sets (and
to prove the point, the character you used in your mail does not appear
as '^' in my display, but as a Boolean "not" operator).

\ Why not send the complete list of the HTML codes for diacritical letters
\ to anybody wishing to do the translation? Or indicate the source on the
\ Internet where a file with such codes can be found?
Well, for one reason, you can submit a hardcopy and not have to worry about
it; if you choose to worry aobut it, the information can be found with
almost no effort - certainly much less than the translation requires.  I
see here that one of the many places is this URL:

http://www.uni-passau.de/~ramsch/iso8859-1.html

\ Why some of them are so linguistically poor? Shame for a "Language Institute".
I would hope that those doing the translations would do their best, and I
certainly would expect that those who are not native speakers would at least
have their work reviewed by someone who is - but that's not always
possible and this was, after all, a volunteer effort.  By all means, correct
any mistakes, but there's certainly no "shame" in making them!  

-marqoS

--
Mark J. Reed                     |             
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