RE: [OT] RE: [ga] Aviation languages

["Debbie Garside" <debbie@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Roberto wrote:

> My worry is that, since we are unable (economically) to 
> guarantee translations in Inuit or Navajo, we conclude that 
> we don't do even French.

Maybe some rules need to be defined.  It strikes me that there are two ways
to do this (there may be more but it is late here :-)).  The first is to
adopt a UN/ISO stance and choose the languages that ICANN will translate to
e.g English/French/Russian within ISO.  The second is to define the
percentage of the target population that speak a language as mother tongue
in order for documents to be translated into that language - e.g. over 20%
of target market (French is mother tongue of approx. 23% in Canada - not
sure what percentage for NA as a whole).

Economically, I would go for the first option.  With my marketing hat on,
the second.  Linguistically, I would translate to all - but that is not
practical.

As ICANN works with regions it makes sense for language "groups" to be
defined for those regions - which brings us full circle to where started ;-)

Best

Debbie
 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Roberto Gaetano [mailto:roberto@xxxxxxxxx] 
> Sent: 17 July 2007 23:03
> To: 'Debbie Garside'; 'Jaap Akkerhuis'; ga@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: RE: [OT] RE: [ga] Aviation languages
> 
> Debbie Garside wrote:
> 
> > 
> > Bringing the topic of conversation back in line with the 
> objectives of 
> > this forum, should we translate the NARALO MoU into 
> Inuit/Inuktitut* 
> > and Cree** and other native languages?
> > Answer, yes we should.  Does it make economic sense?  Answer, sadly 
> > no.  Very often, and certainly in this case, the translation of 
> > documents is about getting information to the most people 
> possible and 
> > this does not mean translating into languages that represent the 
> > mother tongue of less than 1% of the population albeit 100% of the 
> > indigenous population; especially where these people have 
> knowledge of 
> > a second language - in this case English and French.  Sad but true.
> 
> This is a set of good points.
> However, may I remind that this thread started about having 
> the NARALO documents available in English and French.
> My worry is that, since we are unable (economically) to 
> guarantee translations in Inuit or Navajo, we conclude that 
> we don't do even French.
> 
> Cheers,
> Roberto
> 
> 
>