[Foundation-l] Automatic username transliteration for SUL

[James Hare]

On Wikipedia-l or something similar there has been discussion involving
English Wikipedia's policy of blocking users with usernames that do not use
the Latin alphabet. Reasons for opposition to this practice include
ethnocentricism and messing up SUL. However, a point was raised in that
people unfamiliar with the script will just see it as a bunch of
squiggly-lines. A suggested remedy was having people transliterate their
names depending on the wiki.

I'm interested in combining this with a script similar to the Automatic
Conversion script employed on the Chinese Wikipedia, that would, combined
with SUL, automatically transliterate usernames contingent on the wiki they
are on. For example, on French Wikipedia, your username would be in Latin
script, whereas on the Hebrew Wikipedia your username would be in Hebrew
script and on Arabic Wikipedia your username would be in Arabic script.

I know there are scripts out there that can transliterate -- in addition to
the aforementioned conversion script on the Chinese Wikipedia, there are
quite a few scripts out there that will allow you to input something and
have it output in a different script.

http://vereb.free.fr/transliteration/transliterator.html has a pretty cool
one that allows you to type with Latin alphabet settings and it will output
in a different script. For example,
- MessedRocker becomes МесседРоцкер with the Cyrillic setting
- MessedRocker becomes ΜεσσεδΡοcκερ with the Greek setting
- MessedRocker becomes مِصِدرُطكِر with the Arabic setting.

If something could be created for SUL that would take a username and
transliterate it depending on the language of the wiki, that would be great.
I understand there are technical issues involved, but I would like to
discuss it on a community level.

--James