Universal Networking Language
Hi,
As internationalization proceeds I thought this might be a
good time to start a thread on the subject of the
"Universal Networking Language" (UNL).
My proposition is this:
- That SPI seek representation at the The United Nations
University/Institute of Advanced Studies (UNU/IAS).
Currently the technical documentation is available to
members only (as far as I know).
- Select key documents (e.g. Debian Social Contract) and
translate them into UNL.
- Use the "Bazaar" model of systems development to prove
the syntax of the UNL in the "real world".
Imagine if major debian systems were designed with
UNL as the base language...
The following url is a pretty good description. The quote
is from 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 ;-)
I have my doubts about the ability of getting a good
"enconverter" to work without significant human interaction.
I do belive that getting a good "deconverter" is possible,
It is for this reason that I am suggesting formulating
the debian documentation in UNL.
P.S. Some other good urls:
<http://unl.ias.unu.edu/eng/unlsystem-e.gif>
<http://www.ias.unu.edu/>
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