On Friday 07 January 2005 22:43, Delirium wrote:
I should also point out that that's a
completely irrelevant example, and
discriminatory as well. It has a mere 20 languages
EU pays translators for all these languages. It is amazing that they can
manage to fund their translation projects, considering that in some countries
(baltic states) translation was not a profession until 1990's.
discriminate against many languages spoken in the
EU, which which are
minority languages and so have lesser official status. For example,
there is no link to Occitan, or Basque.
http://www.europarl.eu.int/charter/civil/pdf/con33_en.pdf
The PDF file states: "Cultural and linguistic diversity in Europe lies at the
heart of fundamental rights for its citizens as the integration process
advances". EU does recognise diversity.
http://europa.eu.int/comm/education/policies/lang/languages/index_en.html
From the above page you can see the 20 official languages of the EU. Can you
think of any other confederation in history or in the modern world having 20
official languages?
Welsh has been spoken in the Europarl. Sorry but I don't have a handy link
right now.
That is not the point! The point is, the EU itself isn't fair in
translating its website, because it ignores minority languages.
Wikipedia doesn't have to be "fair" either, anyway. We are not the EU.
I personally prefer the tiered system; alphabetise the languages, but
place them in separate categories. It's perfectly fair, *and it's just
plain common sense*. There's no point in inconveniencing 95% of our
users just so we can make the dubious claim of being "fair".
John Lee
([[en:User:Johnleemk]])