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Re^3: Perl to convert US to UK punctuation/spelling?
by jhourcle (Prior) on Jun 16, 2008 at 11:52 UTC
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I don't know what freewheel's purpose is, but I can think of quite a few times when this wouldn't be acceptable. School textbooks for one, but anything that's intended for people who aren't as exposed to the internet and the mixing of language (pensioners and young children, for example)
In some cases of technical documentation, or even just training manuals, you want to reduce ambiguities -- make sure that the instructions are clearly understood, so they're followed correctly. In the case of sales manuals, it shows that you're not just treating the Brits as a subclass of Americans, but actually consider them to a separate and distinct group.
The most important thing is to make sure that your message comes across clearly, without any issues of the carrier used to convey the message. You don't want to translate the word 'bug' to spanish and find that the word selected is slang for penis in Puerto Rico. (See Effective Multicultural Communication)
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I don't consider Brits as a "sub-class of Americans;" I consider native English speakers (from the US, the UK, or elsewhere) to be capable of negotiating the differences between the written versions of US and UK English without too much trouble. Some of us who predate the Web or Internet (which are usually, and incorrectly, considered to be identical) have, say, seen US books and magazines in UK bookstores (I did, roughly 30 years ago), and I know that US movies and TV shows are fairly common in the UK.
Information about American English usage here and here. Floating point issues? Please read this before posting. — emc
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people who aren't as exposed to the internet and the mixing of language (pensioners and young children)
I think you would be hard pressed to find someone young or old these days who had not been exposed to Americanisms by way of the Internet or any other way.
Perhaps freewheel will let us know exactly why the translation needs to be so "English".
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Maybe. But I still remember in the 80s, when I was living in Europe, and we went on a trip to London ... and I bought a transformer. I got it back to the hotel and I read the instructions on how to transform it, and wondered what the hell 'lift the bonnet' and 'open the boot' meant'.
These days, I still have to beware of recipes on the internet -- if I see the word 'coriander', I have to wonder ... if it's British, it'd be what Americans call cilantro. If it's American, it's what the Brits call coriander seed. Of course, you also have to know the age of the recipe, as what we call 'milk' today used to be called 'sweet milk' while 'milk' referred to butter milk. (and 'buttermilk' today is runny yogurt, not what was left over from the butter churning)
The point is -- depending on exactly what you're presenting and what's being presented, it has the potential to be misinterpreted, and then you run into both the recipient and the originator blaming each other. Just because you've seen some Americanisms doesn't mean that you've seen every one, and when you're dealing with dialects of the 'same' language, you run into cases where the recipient may think they understood and be wrong -- you've probably seen it if you have a non-technical manager and you try to explain something in technical jargon where a word has a different meaning in the technical context. (eg, make sure you don't use the word 'hack' when you don't mean 'crack')
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Good thoughts in this thread on the spelling conversion; have not had good luck in the past with outsourcing this kind of thing to India. Fortunately, the idioms will not need conversion; just basic spelling (center / centre). These 1k documents are part of a larger collection of about 24k documents to be published, and the rest are in British English and punctuation and the archive I'm working with is requiring that kidn of basic consistency between the documents.
In terms of quotations, now that I've thought about it more, there seems to be only one case I need to watch out for which is balanced single quotes inside double quotes, complicated potentially by an apostrophe somewhere in the double quotes as well; otherwise, single quotes in the docs stay as they are; in the British usage balanced single quotes in balanced double quotes become balanced double quotes in balanced single quotes; of course there may be a very few cases where the nesting is deeper. I've been thinking about whether there is a clever way to do this with a few s///g rather than checking a character stream....
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[d/l] |
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If all you're concerned about is converting US to UK spelling and US to UK punctuation, I think you'd still need the results proofread. After all, I expect that you would want to avoid something like changing
In US English, 're' is frequently changed to 'er', e.g., 'centre' becomes 'center'.
to
In US English, 're' is frequently changed to 'er', e.g., 'center' becomes 'center'.
Information about American English usage here and here. Floating point issues? Please read this before posting. — emc
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"balanced single quotes inside double quotes, complicated potentially by an apostrophe somewhere in the double quotes as well;" 99.9% of the population wouldn't know anyway.
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Re^3: Perl to convert US to UK punctuation/spelling?
by swampyankee (Parson) on Jun 16, 2008 at 12:15 UTC
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I suspect that the areas where you have to stop and think are pretty much the same as those where I do, with references to various stereotypes (what is US English for "chav?"), local geography, slang, and food (what is "bubble and squeak", although I'm guessing UK English speakers get confused by "grinders").
Information about American English usage here and here. Floating point issues? Please read this before posting. — emc
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