From alb@sct.gouv.qc.ca Wed Aug 27 17:23:55 1997 Received: from socrate.riq.qc.ca (socrate.riq.qc.ca [199.84.128.1]) by dkuug.dk (8.6.12/8.6.12) with ESMTP id RAA24772 for ; Wed, 27 Aug 1997 17:23:49 +0200 Received: from 506.riq.qc.ca by socrate.riq.qc.ca (RIQ1.0/RIQ) id KAA23797; Wed, 27 Aug 1997 10:48:09 -0400 Message-Id: <3.0.1.16.19970827104450.2217b324@riq.qc.ca> X-Sender: alb@riq.qc.ca X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Pro Version 3.0.1 (16) [F] Date: Wed, 27 Aug 1997 10:44:50 To: Roderic Vassie , larrya@asiasoc.org From: Alain LaBonté SCT Subject: Re: Word division: SE Asian scripts Cc: Converse@sesame.demon.co.uk, udom@ram1.ru.ac.th, tc46sc2@elot.gr In-Reply-To: References: <199708041851.QAA03622@solon.elot.gr> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit A 04:14 97-08-05 -0400, Roderic Vassie a écrit : >Word division means human intervention, as does prepositional prefix >division, etc. >Human intervention, if it is to be consistent, means years of training. >Training is expensive. >The resultant text will tend to be readily intelligeable only to a >fraction of those familiar with the original script. >That fraction would probably understand an un-word-divided transliteration >just as readily, since they are able to understand un-word-divided texts >in the original script. > >Roderic Vassie >LoC, Cairo Office [Alain] : Ideally words should not be divided. But if one wants an algorithmically derived method (using no dictionary), this exists in French. We only have 3 or 4 rules. Some might refine it to 6 or 7, but it is really not absolutely necessary except for utmost elegance. That said, we suffer, these days, in those French-speaking newspapers that have chosen English-language computer technology to edit their articles, when words are encountered by the software that do not exist in dictionaries. Words are then not divided on syllable boundaries at all and this upsets the reader. This dictionary technology is very limiting and the computer is left in limbo without an entry. That is bad technology to assume that the whole world languages' words should be in English dictionaries (; Fortunately the rest of the world also makes software on other models, even if the power of money and market is demographically favourable to English, no question about it. Alain LaBonté Québec