M.T. Carrasco Benitez Expires 30 September 1998 31 March 1998 Codes for language transformation Status of this Memo This document is an Internet-Draft. Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), its areas, and its working groups. Note that other groups may also distribute working documents as Internet-Drafts. Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months. Internet-Drafts may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is not appropriate to use Internet- Drafts as reference material or to cite them other than as a "working draft" or "work in progress". To view the entire list of current Internet-Drafts, please check the "1id-abstracts.txt" listing contained in the Internet-Drafts Shadow Directories on ftp.is.co.za (Africa), ftp.nordu.net (Northern Europe), ftp.nis.garr.it (Southern Europe), munnari.oz.au (Pacific Rim), ftp.ietf.org (US East Coast), or ftp.isi.edu (US West Coast). Distribution of this document is unlimited. Please send comments to the author at . This document is intended to become an informational RFC, and its content is designed for adoption in other standards and specifications. Overview and Rational The RFC1766 describes the language tags. In the present form, it does not allow to indicate language transformations such as transliteration. This memo is a proposition to allow such transformations. Overview This is a draft proposal to extend the RFC1766 to cover language transformations (transliteration/transcription/trans-anything) from one language (the source language) to another (the target language). In this context, tranformation means that the source language is expressed in another way (e.g., in another alphabet) for people familiar with the target language. This is not translation. There can be many different transformation schemes between two languages. The source language and the target language could be the same. In this case, it will be a transformation within the same language. For example, a transformation from English expressed with the Latin alphabet into English in Braille. Question: Does it makes sense to include Braille transformation ? Syntax This is the proposed syntax: ss-tran-tt-sss where * ss : Source language. Primary language tag. ISO 639 two character language code. Mandatory. * tran : Transformation indicator. First subtag. Literal string "tran". Mandatory. * tt : Target language. Second subtag. ISO 639 two character language code. Optional. If missing, the target language is the same as the source language. * sss : Transformation scheme. Second (if the target language is missing) or third subtag. Must be three or more characters to avoid confusion with the target language. Optional. If missing, the default transformation is applied. Examples * fr-tran : French to French with the default transformation (e.g., Braille). * el-tran-en : Greek to English with the default transformation (e.g., some transliteration). * fr-tran-mybraille2 : French to French with transformation mybraille2. * el-tran-en-mytran3 : Greek to English with the transformation mytran3. This syntax only requires registering "tran" with AINA. Schemes A scheme system is needed that defines: * The tranformations between ordered (i.e., ru-en is different from en-ru) language pair. * The default transformation for each ordered language pair. Author's Address Manuel Tomas CARRASCO BENITEZ The European Agency for the Evaluation of Medicinal Products 7 Westferry Circus Canary Wharf London E14 4HB U.K. Phone: +44 171 418 8645 Email: manuel.carrasco@emea.eudra.org URL: http://dragoman.org References [RFC1766] "Tags for the Identification of Languages", H. Alvestrand, March 1995. Available at http://ds.internic.net/rfc/rfc1766.txt This document is html format. http://dragoman.org/winter/lanco.html