[Foundation-l] Automatic username transliteration for SUL

Thu Dec 21 02:49:04 UTC 2006

I don't know if IPA would work... I mean for all we know, "Bob" could have
some random pronounciation of "ko-ho-ba-fay-jo-muh". When it comes to
storing it in the database, I agree it should be some uniform script, like a
Federation Standard of sorts...

On 12/20/06, Neil Harris <usenet at tonal.clara.co.uk> wrote:
>
> James Hare wrote:
> > On Wikipedia-l or something similar there has been discussion involving
> > English Wikipedia's policy of blocking users with usernames that do not
> use
> > the Latin alphabet. Reasons for opposition to this practice include
> > ethnocentricism and messing up SUL. However, a point was raised in that
> > people unfamiliar with the script will just see it as a bunch of
> > squiggly-lines. A suggested remedy was having people transliterate their
> > names depending on the wiki.
> >
> > I'm interested in combining this with a script similar to the Automatic
> > Conversion script employed on the Chinese Wikipedia, that would,
> combined
> > with SUL, automatically transliterate usernames contingent on the wiki
> they
> > are on. For example, on French Wikipedia, your username would be in
> Latin
> > script, whereas on the Hebrew Wikipedia your username would be in Hebrew
> > script and on Arabic Wikipedia your username would be in Arabic script.
> >
> > I know there are scripts out there that can transliterate -- in addition
> to
> > the aforementioned conversion script on the Chinese Wikipedia, there are
> > quite a few scripts out there that will allow you to input something and
> > have it output in a different script.
> >
> > http://vereb.free.fr/transliteration/transliterator.html has a pretty
> cool
> > one that allows you to type with Latin alphabet settings and it will
> output
> > in a different script. For example,
> > - MessedRocker becomes МесседРоцкер with the Cyrillic setting
> > - MessedRocker becomes ΜεσσεδΡοcκερ with the Greek setting
> > - MessedRocker becomes مِصِدرُطكِر with the Arabic setting.
> >
> > If something could be created for SUL that would take a username and
> > transliterate it depending on the language of the wiki, that would be
> great.
> > I understand there are technical issues involved, but I would like to
> > discuss it on a community level.
> >
> > --James
> >
>
> If we can make it as simple as that (and acknowledge that the automatic
> transliteration will often be very, very,  bad) we could possibly make
> this work, with the option to change your nick to something else later.
>
> Perhaps language -> IPA -> language might be a good way of helping the m
> x n problem for this, in which case we could use language <-> IPA tables
> to bootstrap this.
>
> Would this be a good idea, or would it be linguistic nonsense?
>
> -- Neil
>
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