Re: Internationalization: Universal Networking Language
> Please, could you elaborate a bit on UNL, what it actually means?
>
> Is it a esperanto for hackers, or what :)
>
> Marcus
Something like that :-)
The following url is a pretty good description. The quote
is the opening paragraph.
<http://www.ias.unu.edu/research_prog/science%20technology/universalnetwork_language.html>
"Project abstract
UNL stands for "Universal Networking Language", an
electronic language that
enables communication between different native languages. It
is a system of
"enconverter" and "deconverter" software that will reside on
the Internet, and
will be compatible with standard network servers. Any person
with access to the
Internet will be able to "enconvert" text from a range of
native languages into
UNL. Just as easily, any UNL text can be "deconverted" from
UNL into native
languages."
Note that UNL is directed toward are natural languages.
The idea is that it is possible to express the "true"
meaning of
a concept in some "Universal Grammer" and that this
representation
can be translated into any other language.
All translators implicitly require this to be true.
Translation consists of two steps:
- parse a document through some interface into some data
structures
- export the data structures through some interface to a
document.
The data stuctures are preseved as UNL.
The ramifications of this to debian are if documents are
created and
proofed as "enconverted" UNL documents they can
"deconverted" into
specific natural languages.
This would make debian an international system (which
couldn't hurt
Bruce's presentation next month ;-)
P.S. Sorry about including an attachment in that last post,
I just liked the picture.
<http://unl.ias.unu.edu/eng/unlsystem-e.gif>
The main page is <http://www.ias.unu.edu/>
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