Ian Hickson wrote:
Section 4.6.20, "The ruby element", says:
In this example, each ideograph in the Japanese text 漢字 is
annotated
with its kanji reading
The parallelism with "bopomofo reading" and "pinyin reading" in the
second and third examples in this section implies that "kanji
reading"
is being used to mean "reading written in kanji". But in fact, the
reading is written in hiragana.
What should the example say? "hiragana reading"? I know nothing about
this, so I've no idea what the right label should be.
I suggest "reading in hiragana".
"Hiragana reading" implies that there are several types of reading,
and a hiragana reading is one of them. But really there is only one
reading (i.e. way to pronounce the word), but several different ways
to write it. (Google backs me up on this: search results for "reading
in hiragana" match this use, whereas search results for "hiragana
reading" do not.)
Should the word "kanji" appear anywhere in the description?
I think not. You could substitute "kanji" for "ideograph" if you
prefer: "each kanji in the Japanese text 漢字 is annotated with its
reading in hiragana" but that probably assumes a bit too much
knowledge about Japanese for the intended readership.
(Just to confuse matters, 漢字 itself has the reading "kanji" when
written in Roman letters.)
--
Gareth Rees
