Notes from my terminal

Conference on Korean

I'll spend Friday and Satuday at a conference called "Interface of Translation Studies and Language Sciences: The Case of Korean", organized by my school here in Bonn. I'll try to blog about it.

Multilingual websites using national flags

One common design element when offering different versions of your website in various languages is to use a national flag of a country that is most often associated with that language as a designator for a specific language choice. I wonder if this is actually a wise choice. People speaking German, but are from Austria, Switzerland, Belgium or Luxemburg (to name just a few) usually have to give their language preference by clicking on the flag of the Federal Republic of Germany. Don't get me started on all the African nations that have to choose the flag of France or the dilemma of what to use for English (is it the Union Jack or the Star-Sprangled Banner? And what about Irleland, New Zealand and Australia?).

While you could dismiss all this nitpicking as unnecessary political correctness, there are cases where you actually make a political statement by using a flag. While the Taiwanese flag is used in Taiwan and appears to be a valid choice for "traditional Chinese characters" (in contrast to the simplified version used in Mainland China), the People's Republic of China doesn't recognize Taiwan as an independent entity, but rather regards it as a part of China. Most countries with diplomatic relationships with the PRC follow this interpretation, at least officially. Same thing applies to minority languages in China, such as Tibetan. Depending on what side you want to listen to, you have the choice to use the flag of a "separist movement" or the "oppressors". And what flag should you use for Kurdish? The PKK's Party Flag? What about languages without an official nation, e.g. Yiddish or Aramaic? You could probably go on endlessly.

Wouldn't just giving the name of the language in its official form be an alternative? Well, in most cases, yes. A notable exception is Korean, where you have to choose between "Hangugeo" (한국어) and "Joseoneo" (조선어), as North and South Korea refer to "Korea" by different names and thus use different words for the language spoken in that country. In Inter-Korean talks, "uri mal" (우리말), i.e. "our language" is used as a compromise when referring to the Korean language. At the Korean institute of the Bonn University, the institute's name is given in English ("Korea Department") when communicating with North Korea. Using the official Korean name (which uses the South-Korean term "hanguk") would be too insulting...

But I disgress. If someone has a better idea for a metaphor than flags that can be used for language choosing, I'm eager to hear it.

RFC 3092 - Etymology of "Foo"

RFC 3092 tries to solve the old question on the origin of "foo" and related words used in hackers' slang. Makes a fascinating reading.

Abstract

Approximately 212 RFCs so far, starting with RFC 269, contain the terms `foo', `bar', or `foobar' as metasyntactic variables without any proper explanation or definition. This document rectifies that deficiency.

How do you spell that?

In case you want to know how to write this year's animal: Here's how...

Year of the Monkey

Six-year-old male sea lion 'Jonao' holds a brush in his mouth to write 'monkey' in Chinese character to mark 2004, the year of the monkey, at Sea Paradise aquarium in Yokohama. (AFP/Toru Yamanaka) [via jwz]

Well, actually that's not quite correct. Axel rightly pointed me to the fact that the Chinese character for monkey (and thus this year's animal) is actually "猴". What the cute sea lion paints is "申", the ninth sign of the earthly stem that can be associated with the year of the monkey. Apart from the animal, Chinese years have additional modifiers (heavenly and earthly stem), marking the year on a 60-year base (this is why the 60th birthday is such a big deal in Asia: You have "completed" your life, as both animal and modifiers are again the same as in the year you were born). In Chinese 申 is pronounced "shen", in Korean "shin", its meaning is (among lots of others) "report". There's a Chinese detective novel, I was told, where the name of the murderer is given as a riddle: "It's the monkey in the chariot". The Chinese character for "chariot" or "car" is 車, clearly similar to 申. And 申 can actually be a family name...

Oh, and of course you could argue that the year of the monkey won't start before Lunar or Chinese New Year (around January 21-23, this year). But since many people in Asia are relaxed about mixing the traditional and Western calendar, we should be so as well. Happy New Year, everyone. Do great monkey business this year. :)