--On Sunday, 09 March, 2014 14:07 -0400 Ted Lemon
<ted(_dot_)lemon(_at_)nominum(_dot_)com> wrote:
On Mar 9, 2014, at 2:05 PM, Ted Lemon <ted(_dot_)lemon(_at_)nominum(_dot_)com>
wrote:
If we are all going to learn a new language, why not Chinese?
(BTW, there's a certain irony in the use of "Chinese" to refer
to a single language, of which I am well aware, but the
commonality to the writing system is really what I consider
most important.)
Because of that irony, switching to "Chinese" might help us
eliminate the need for decision-making in f2f meetings and move
things back to the mailing lists. Of course, so would anything
else that doesn't involve very high quality,
technically-sensitive, parallel translation. Some people who
have experienced attempts at the latter claim it is impossible
- a recent piece about translation of literature in the NY Times
is helpful in understanding the problem but, especially for
literature, while language translates more or less well, culture
rarely translates at all. Sometimes technical literature works
better, but, because the precision requirements are often
higher, sometimes not.
john