All, I haven't written a Friday Question in some time, so here is a new installment.
With the exit of Britain for the European Union (Brexit), I find it interesting but not surprising that English remains one of the official languages, at least for now. For many years there has been a large body of documentation provided in English and indeed, many of the European Norms are based on IEC standards originating in French & English. I wonder, will this policy change in the foreseeable future? It has been my practice to tell clients that the minimum requirement for translation of user document(s) and product markings is they must first be in one of the official languages and upon request by the end user, the local language becomes a requirement as well. I haven't checked in some time, but the Machinery Directive may require this without end user involvement. In some cases, local regulatory requirements may dictate which languages must be used for specific information especially involving EHS. Incidentally, a good friend who is in Planetary Aeronomy and Astro-geophysics has told me, if you know just one of a handful of languages, you can just about go anywhere in the scientific world community; these being English, French, German, Japanese and possibly Russian. So now there is the question of which "English" is the official language of the EU, British (Cambridge) English? I suspect that Brits, Aussies and Americans will all have no trouble understanding one another, even with differences in spelling, grammar and possibly idioms. Or as Wikipedia puts it, these are "mutually comprehensible" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dialects_of_English). I noticed one form of English not mentioned in the Wikipedia article, Texas. All the best, Doug PS - The bottom line, every Tom, Dick and Harry should avoid cliché at all costs. -- Douglas E Powell [email protected] http://www.linkedin.com/in/dougp01 - ---------------------------------------------------------------- This message is from the IEEE Product Safety Engineering Society emc-pstc discussion list. To post a message to the list, send your e-mail to <[email protected]> All emc-pstc postings are archived and searchable on the web at: http://www.ieee-pses.org/emc-pstc.html Attachments are not permitted but the IEEE PSES Online Communities site at http://product-compliance.oc.ieee.org/ can be used for graphics (in well-used formats), large files, etc. Website: http://www.ieee-pses.org/ Instructions: http://www.ieee-pses.org/list.html (including how to unsubscribe) List rules: http://www.ieee-pses.org/listrules.html For help, send mail to the list administrators: Scott Douglas <[email protected]> Mike Cantwell <[email protected]> For policy questions, send mail to: Jim Bacher: <[email protected]> David Heald: <[email protected]>
