[WikiEN-l] Tagging foreign language text with templates

[David Goodman]

If we ever get an integrated spellcheck, it will need these tags; they
are also valuable during automatic translation if the translator is
sufficiently sophisticated to recognize them (and not try to translate
into the target language).
But there should be a visually less prominent way of doing it. For one
thing, they shouldn't be recognized as links--that's really worthless
when they just link to the language.  I have my skin set for blue, but
for those using red or underlining it must be really awful.  DGG

On 5/15/07, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> Matthew Brown wrote:
>
> >On 5/14/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> >>http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Phare_de_la_Vieille&diff=130494303&oldid=130474199
> >>
> >>Is there any consensus for this? Seems like a massive blow to readable
> >>wikitext for not much benefit.
> >>
> >>
> >People have been doing this to Japanese for a while - see {{nihongo}}.
> >That is arguably useful in that Japanese-language names need to be
> >transliterated in order to be readable, let alone comprehensible, to
> >most English readers,
> >
> So transliterate them unless there is already an established English
> form.  The purpose of original script is for people to be able to follow
> the matter up in that language.  An interwiki link to the WP in that
> language or to Wiktionary would at least have some usefulness.
>
> >and a standard format for putting the different
> >forms is nice.
> >
> Why?
>
> >The point of this template is that it marks up the language used so
> >that it can be displayed or spoken correctly.  It encloses it in <span
> >lang="language"></span> tags.
> >
> It just puts tags around it.  How is that going to get things pronounced
> "correctly".  Is that even needed?  Do we tag mathematical or musical
> expressions for proper pronunciation?
>
> >It's important to note that Unicode does not encode the language, just
> >the characters.
> >
> That's as it should be.
>
> >Read up on [[Han unification]] to understand the
> >problems this gives with characters deemed the same across multiple
> >Asian languages even if the characters are actually written quite
> >differently when used to write Japanese vs. Chinese, for instance.
> >
> In situations where this matters the people involved already have a
> reasonable knowledge of the language(s) involved.
>
> >There are less glaring examples stylistically in a number of European
> >languages (exact positioning and style of diacritics, for instance).
> >
> >As well as display/typography issues not handled in Unicode, this also
> >allows screen readers and the like to have a better chance of
> >understanding words in different languages.
> >
> Wikipedia is not a dictionary.
>
> >It's certainly neater than using the HTML, but it's not exactly 100%
> >intuitive either.  I'm torn on this one; the more complicated Wiki
> >markup becomes, the less friendly it is, but on the other hand, it's
> >not good to lose information either.
> >
> Our markups are already overcomplicated.  The last thing we need is more
> geekish imperialism.  Omitting this does not lose any notable
> information at all. If all details in an article would go to this level
> of minutiae all of them would be much longer and much more boring.
>
> Ec
>
>
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-- 
David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S.