[extropy-chat] i-language again

[Harvey Newstrom]

Spike wrote,
> > Example, spike.  (1) picture of a railroad spike.
> > (2) picture of a athletic shoe with cleats.
> > (3) picture of graph with a sudden upturn.
> > ...
> > (11) picture of Spike Jones the musician, etc... spike

Interesting ideas, Spike!  Some comments:

Apple has almost done what you are describing with their AppleScript
programming language.  It is very human-language like, in an attempt to make
it readable and debuggable by casual users.  So you can code something like
"Tell the application Word to find my document named Resume and then
spellcheck it with dictionary English with option underlining on and then
save results onto network disk named Server unless status of network disk
named Server is off."  This almost looks like English.

But what is really interesting is that they tokenize these words to
byte-code numbers.  A foreign-language speaker sharing a network disk and
looking at the exact same script above would see their own language!  Each
foreign speaker can read and edit the script in their own language, while
all other viewers see their own native language instead.  I think this
approach would be a great way to have language-independent documents.  For
this, you would need to distinguish different (numbered meanings) as you
suggested earlier.


Internationally understood icons are not as easy as you think.  I researched
this almost 15 years ago for some computer work.  Many icons make sense in
one language, but not another.  

- The "hotness" of taco sauce can be represented by a thermometer in
English, because the word "hot" means high temperature and high spiciness.
In Spanish, these are unrelated words and nobody would connect the
thermometer with spiciness.  
- Remember that the Red Cross has to be changed to the Red Crescent in the
Middle East.
- Some cultures find the words "encrypted" and "decrypted" to be offensive
swear-words because they refer to crypts or dead bodies.  (International
security documents use "encipher" and "decipher" for this reason.) 
- The thumb-and-circle "OK" sign and the pilot's "thumbs up" sign are
offensive vulgar gestures in some cultures.
- Showing teeth (or bone) is considered offensive in many Asian cultures, so
a smile is not good.
- In the Philippines, raising one's eyebrows up and down is a greeting or an
affirmative answer.  People from other cultures may misinterpret this.  They
also signal people to come closer by waving downward.
- A few cultures shake their head up-and-down to answer negative.
- Searching for Culture FAQs and in alt.<groupname>.culture on usenet will
find more information


Many Asian cultures can almost read other Asian languages because many of
the ideograms are similar.  These evolved from more primitive pictographs of
the items represented.  It makes sense that various cultures would use
similar icons.  But the spoken words for these similar icons are totally
different in each language even in cases where the icons were identical.

-- 
Harvey Newstrom, CISSP, CISA, CISM, IAM, IBMCP, GSEC
Certified IS Security Pro, Certified IS Auditor, Certified InfoSec Manager,
NSA Certified Assessor, IBM Certified Consultant, SANS Certified GIAC
<HarveyNewstrom.com> <Newstaff.com>