Translation of personal names (was: Re: XHTML Basic)

Hello Martin,
Hello Alexander,

just to swim against the tide. I never translate people�s names, not 
because I�m afraid of the work to find all languages for the 
xml:lang, but I think it is simply not necessary.

I haven�t met any English speaker who pronounced for example my name 
the right way. 

That is not a matter of phonetic transcription, that�s a matter of 
that he is not a native German speaker, but that is not really a 
matter. ;-)

I think it�s more important to recognize a name at once in other 
documents. To stay by your example:

If you see the name Deiv Reggitt in a translation and look into 
another document (news, Rec, whatever) where the name is in it�s 
original form, do you recognize it at once?

If you like to tell people, how to pronounce it, why not go the way:

<span xml:lang="en">Mark Baker</span> (pronounced: Mark Beiker) .

So that you ever give your reader the original name.


>   XHTML Basic is to be enclosed in <span xml:lang="en"> too.
Not necessarily.

>   In general it would be a good idea (for those writing the specs) to
>   indicate a name's language using <span> with xml:lang on it.
Agree.

Happy working,
Stefan 

-- 
Stefan Schumacher
Oesterberg 20                                   0172/2718968
58553 Halver                                    02353/130119
Germany
www.schumacher-netz.de

Received on Saturday, 13 April 2002 08:01:28 UTC