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From: Steve Green
Date: Wed, Mar 29 2023 11:20PM
Subject: Marking-up changes of language from English to Latin
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I am working on a biological website that contains thousands of Latin names such as Fucus vesiculosus and Patella vulgate. Is it really necessary to mark-up every change of language?

SC 3.1.2 (Language of Parts) contains an exclusion, saying "Individual words or phrases in one language can become part of another language" and uses "rendezvous" as an example. However, it's a bit of a stretch to say phrases like Fucus vesiculosus and Patella vulgate have become part of English. Or have they?

And then there's the problem of words that have been "latinised", but are not actually Latin. They are not really English either, so what are they? I think "Austrominius" is such a word. How would you recognise them if you don't speak Latin fluently?

It's probably safe to assume there aren't any Latin TTS synthesizers, so is there any accessibility benefit in marking-up the changes?

Regards,
Steve Green
Managing Director
Test Partners Ltd
020 3002 4176 (direct)
0800 612 2780 (switchboard)
07957 246 276 (mobile)
020 7692 5517 (fax)
Skype: testpartners
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www.testpartners.co.uk
 
Connect to me on LinkedIn - http://uk.linkedin.com/in/stevegreen2

From: Birkir R. Gunnarsson
Date: Thu, Mar 30 2023 3:54AM
Subject: Re: Marking-up changes of language from English to Latin
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I'd say "no", there are no benefits.
Like you said, there are no Latin synthesizers. The audience for this
is likely taking classes or are professionals that use the phrases as
part of their day-today language, which is English. They will be used
to hearing an English (ish) version of these words, so marking them up
in another language is likely to cause more confusion than anything.
That's my 2 cents, or whatever the equivalent was in Roman currency.

On 3/30/23, Steve Green < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > wrote:
> I am working on a biological website that contains thousands of Latin names
> such as Fucus vesiculosus and Patella vulgate. Is it really necessary to
> mark-up every change of language?
>
> SC 3.1.2 (Language of Parts) contains an exclusion, saying "Individual words
> or phrases in one language can become part of another language" and uses
> "rendezvous" as an example. However, it's a bit of a stretch to say phrases
> like Fucus vesiculosus and Patella vulgate have become part of English. Or
> have they?
>
> And then there's the problem of words that have been "latinised", but are
> not actually Latin. They are not really English either, so what are they? I
> think "Austrominius" is such a word. How would you recognise them if you
> don't speak Latin fluently?
>
> It's probably safe to assume there aren't any Latin TTS synthesizers, so is
> there any accessibility benefit in marking-up the changes?
>
> Regards,
> Steve Green
> Managing Director
> Test Partners Ltd
> 020 3002 4176 (direct)
> 0800 612 2780 (switchboard)
> 07957 246 276 (mobile)
> 020 7692 5517 (fax)
> Skype: testpartners
> = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
> www.testpartners.co.uk
>
> Connect to me on LinkedIn - http://uk.linkedin.com/in/stevegreen2
>
> > > > >


--
Work hard. Have fun. Make history.

From: glen walker
Date: Thu, Mar 30 2023 9:31AM
Subject: Re: Marking-up changes of language from English to Latin
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In case you need/want it, I was going to say the same thing as Birkir.

However, while VoiceOver and JAWS don't have a Latin language setting, NVDA
does if you use the eSpeak NG built-in synthesizer (
https://github.com/espeak-ng/espeak-ng/blob/master/docs/languages.md). I
don't personally use that synthesizer because it sounds too robotic, but
there is a Latin language. I just tried it and it mostly sounds like
English, even on the Latin words.

Side note, I use the "Windows Onecore voices" synthesizer for NVDA. It took
me a while to figure out how to install language packs for that synthesizer
but the way it works for me (let me know if there's another way) is going
to the Narrator settings and selecting "add more voices" then "add
voices". I guess it makes sense if I'm using a Microsoft Windows
synthesizer that I have to install the language packs through the Microsoft
Windows screen reader. When I demo a screen reader when conducting
training, it's a fun exercise to show how the language can switch if you
use the HTML lang attribute properly. For the longest time, I would always
have to demo that part using JAWS because I couldn't get NVDA to work until
I stumbled upon the Narrator settings.

From: L Snider
Date: Thu, Mar 30 2023 10:57AM
Subject: Re: Marking-up changes of language from English to Latin
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I just had an auditor who uses NVDA tell me that a latin area (that wasn't
marked as such), they thought was in French. It really confused them
without the mark up.

Cheers

Lisa

On Thu, Mar 30, 2023 at 2:20 AM Steve Green < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = >
wrote:

> I am working on a biological website that contains thousands of Latin
> names such as Fucus vesiculosus and Patella vulgate. Is it really necessary
> to mark-up every change of language?
>
> SC 3.1.2 (Language of Parts) contains an exclusion, saying "Individual
> words or phrases in one language can become part of another language" and
> uses "rendezvous" as an example. However, it's a bit of a stretch to say
> phrases like Fucus vesiculosus and Patella vulgate have become part of
> English. Or have they?
>
> And then there's the problem of words that have been "latinised", but are
> not actually Latin. They are not really English either, so what are they? I
> think "Austrominius" is such a word. How would you recognise them if you
> don't speak Latin fluently?
>
> It's probably safe to assume there aren't any Latin TTS synthesizers, so
> is there any accessibility benefit in marking-up the changes?
>
> Regards,
> Steve Green
> Managing Director
> Test Partners Ltd
> 020 3002 4176 (direct)
> 0800 612 2780 (switchboard)
> 07957 246 276 (mobile)
> 020 7692 5517 (fax)
> Skype: testpartners
> = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
> www.testpartners.co.uk
>
> Connect to me on LinkedIn - http://uk.linkedin.com/in/stevegreen2
>
> > > > >

From: Guy Hickling
Date: Mon, Apr 03 2023 11:05AM
Subject: Re: Marking-up changes of language from English to Latin
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It seems to me that we already "anglicise" Latin when learning it in school
(as some of us had to!) and when using Latin terms in speech - including in
high-quantity usage such as in botanical texts. So there would be nothing
to gain in marking up these terms, even where speech synthesisers can do
something for it, since such terms should be spoken with an English accent
anyway. I am willing to bet that the Romans didn't use a pronunciation
anything like today's modern English, or like how we pronounce Latin, but
since Julius Caesar and his ilk are unavailable for comment and would not
know how to use this forum anyway, I don't suppose anyone can tell us how
they pronounced it!

But, let's ask the same question from the point of view of French websites
containing Latin terms and text passages. French has a pronunciation
nothing like English. Now, do French people pronounce Latin with the same
pronunciation as English and American people do (i.e. anglicised), or do
they give it their usual French pronunciations? I don't know on that - we
need a few French participants on this forum to tell us what they normally
do in France, or a bit of research.

Because, if they use the same pronunciations for Latin that we do, they
they would most certainly need all Latin terms, in French websites, to be
marked up with lang attributes so they don't get given French
pronunciations. The question is, what lang attribute should they use? If
most screen readers don't have a Latin module to provide a correct
rendering, then nothing will be achieved by using the Latin attribute -
everything will just be given a French accent. It might be better to use an
"en" lang attribute so the Latin texts get anglicised instead of being
given French pronunciations.

And the same question arises for websites in other languages that are very
different from English, such as Polish, or Chinese - how do they normally
pronounce Latin text?