Subject: RE: Transliteration standards: possible impact on internationalization

From: [email-masked] (John Clews)
Date: Mon, 17 Nov 1997 11:10:07 GMT

In message <5DFB753C1329D1119DEC00805F15C342D91C@WS015>
Carrasco Benitez Manuel writes:

> Transliteration should be coded in RFC 1766 (Mr. Alvestrand ?).
>
> For example:
> 
>   t-xx
> 
> where
>   t   : transliteration
>   xx : a 639 language code

I'm happy to cooperate with Mr. Alvestrand if necessary.
There are two points to note:

1. The work of ISO/TC46/SC2 actually provides the transliteration
   schemes, it doesn't just refer to specific transliteration schemes;

2. transliteration refers to the conversion of text/data in one
   script to text/data in a another script: a language may be written
   in more than one script, and a script (e.g. Latin or Cyrillic) may
   have several languages which use that script.

3. I would agree with what Carrasco Benitez Manuel implies, that
   there should be more coordination between different parts of
   ISO and IS/IEC, and bodies like IETF. I hope the Cultural
   Adapatility Workshop in Ottawa in January will address these
   issues. Several data elements like language codes, script codes,
   currency codes, where IT developers and users are the largest
   single group of users, are too often done separately without any
   coordination.

Best wishes

John Clews

--
Chair of ISO/TC46/SC2: Conversion of Written Languages;
Member of CEN/TC304: Character Set Technology;
Member of ISO/IEC/JTC1/SC2: Character Sets.

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