Hi, Malcolm
As far as I know, the propercasing, as in English, does not apply to the
romance-family languages (French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian). I
also write and read Russian, they don't have it either.
There is something that is known as "politeness pronoun", which is present in
most European languages. It's a form for "you", which is always considered to
be plural (that's it - the rest of the text is phrased in plural form,
disregarding the number), and it is used when talking to elder people, or to
someone you've just met. In some languages, the plural for "you" is used as
politeness pronoun, in other languages they have a different word for it:
French: "tu" vs. "vous" (vous is the plural form for "tu")
German: "du" versus "Sie" (the plural form for "du" is "ihr")
Romanian: "tu" versus "dumneavoastra" ("voi" is the plural form for "tu")
and so on.
Here is an interesting map about the politeness pronoun. Btw, I just found that
there are languages where pronouns are actually avoided in order to express
politeness. Man, this world is really a Tower of Babel ;)
http://tinyurl.com/25cx67a
Most of the time this politeness pronoun is capitalized, but not always. :)
I don't think the propercasing can be done automatically, or, at least, not
easy enough. Let me dig an example: when one writes an official paper addressed
to the mayor, for example, it starts with "Domnule Primar" ("Mister Mayor") and
in this case Mayor is always capitalized, unlike when is used in a regular
proposition, where is not capitalized. In order to have a correct
capitalization, the algorithm need to know A LOT of grammar of each language,
and also have a word database, because sometimes nouns behave different than
verbs, and so on.
Language names aren't usually capitalized in European languages, except English
and German. In German all nouns are capitalized disregarding their usage. Just
nouns, lol :)
I would go for storing each and every string in a table and leave the
translator to capitalize the text, based on context.
> -----Original Message-----
> From: [email protected] [mailto:profoxtech-
> [email protected]] On Behalf Of Malcolm Greene
> Sent: Wednesday, August 04, 2010 9:17 PM
> To: [email protected]
> Subject: [NF] Propercasing non-English text
>
> Looking for feedback from my non-English comrades. I may have some
> western European, Russian, Japanese content that may need to be proper-
> cased on reports. Does the concept of propercasing apply to your
> language(s)? If so, can your language be propercased mechanically
> (algorthimically) or are there too many exceptions or does the concept of
> propercase not apply to your language at all? Am I even using the correct
> term (propercasing) or are there more accurate terms for your language?
>
> Thank you,
> Malcolm
>
>
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