IETF languages, was: something about RFCs

2009-07-09 Thread Iljitsch van Beijnum

On 9 jul 2009, at 18:15, james woodyatt wrote:

B) is open for debate: what precisely should be the set of primary  
natural languages used in IETF documents?  Should it continue to be  
English only?  I'd very much prefer to see *that* discussion  
vigorously deferred while our archival format continues to be the  
largest practical obstacle to multilingualism.


There are two things that together make it completely impossible to  
adopt more working languages:


1. We don't have any other languages in common than English
2. We don't have the money for translation/interpretation services

Dus als we naast Engels ook andere talen gaan gebruiken betekent dat  
dat de niet-Engelse documenten maar door een deel van de IETF- 
participanten gelezen kan worden, wat natuurlijk niet de bedoeling is.


Or:

So if we start using other languages in addition to English then the  
non-English documents can only be read by part of the IETF- 
participants, which of course defeats the purpose.


Now I'd be very happy to be able to conduct IETF business in Dutch,  
but I'd be very much opposed to having to learn a new language to  
participate in the IETF. It took me long enough to learn English...

___
Ietf mailing list
Ietf@ietf.org
https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf


Re: IETF languages, was: something about RFCs

2009-07-09 Thread james woodyatt

On Jul 9, 2009, at 10:01, Iljitsch van Beijnum wrote:


There are two things that together make it completely impossible to  
adopt more working languages [...]


My point wasn't to argue that we should consider working in non- 
English languages, but simply to explain why it's reasonable to rule  
that discussion out of scope while we get on with talking about  
archival formats: there is no reason to believe that expanding our  
archival formats would further limit our future options for adopting  
new working languages.  (I'm thinking centuries into the future here.)



--
james woodyatt j...@apple.com
member of technical staff, communications engineering



___
Ietf mailing list
Ietf@ietf.org
https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf