> > These is completely comparable to the fact that my local > > English-language newspaper doesn't need a German language tag > > to write Gerhard Schroeder. > > How about a multilingual newspaper?
What of a multilingual newspaper? Take a hypothetical instance of a German/English newspaper, which presented all the news twice -- once in German, and again in English. So the German side says, for example: Nach einem 19 Monate dauernden Stillstand im Nahost-Friedensproze� und einem z�hen achtt�gigen Verhandlungsmarathon bei Washington haben sich Israels Ministerpr�sident Netanjahu und der Vorsitzende der pal�stinensischen Autonomiebeh�rde, Arafat, in einer langem Sitzung in der Nacht zum Freitag auf ein Interimsabkommen �ber ,,Land f�r Sicherheit`` geeignigt... Then the English side would say: After a 19 month pause in the Middle East peace process... etc. In such a case, it would make sense to tag the *entire* German text as German, and the *entire* English text as English (and it would probably be done so in terms of markup in any case). But it would make no particular sense to start digging into the material and tagging "Washington" as English (although it is) and "Israel" and "Netanjahu" as Hebrew (although they are) and "Arafat" as Arabic (although it is). Embedded quotations of untranslated material, if they occur, perhaps. Well, Chinese and Japanese work the same way. You do whatever adaptation of the names are required for your local language, and then you present them as expected to the reader of *that* language. So, in the above example, "Netanjahu" for the German reader, "Netanyahu" for the English reader -- but in neither case presented in the original Hebrew. (In fact, for German, you will also commonly find it spelled "Netanyahu" -- but you won't find it in Hebrew.) --Ken
