Mission Travel Report
Date: dd mmm yyyy
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STF
Title:
Author:
287
User-oriented handling of multicultural issues in broadband and narrowband multimedia
communications
Mike Pluke
Mike.Pluke@castle-consult.com
Subject: STF287 Workshop and ETSI hosted meeting of CEN/ISSS Cultural
Diversity Focus Group (CDFG) – 16th to 17th March 2006
Place:
Sophia Antipolis, France
Travel Order: STF/2006/033
1
Scope of the event
At the October 2005 meeitng of the CEN/ISSS Cultural Diversity Focus Group (CDFG), Mike Pluke offered
to host their next meeting at the ETSI premises in Sophia Antipolis, France and at the same time have a
Workshop completely devoted to presenting and discussing the work of the STF.
The fist day of the 2-day event was a normal CDFG meeting and the second day was devoted to the
STF287 workshop.
At the meeting, a number of very useful issues arose and these had an influence on the content of the
final STF287 ETSI Guide. In particular, some invited Lithuanian guests gave a very impressive display of
how today's software systems are unable to handle the highly complex multi-diacritic characters in the
Lithuanian alphabet. Some of the issues identified were that most software treated these complex
characters in such a way that words containing them would get split instead of wrapped as whole words at
the end of lines of text. The resulting debate between different experts in character sets and alphabets got
very heated and showed that systems what Unicode has standardised makes such artefacts possible,
with other experts claiming that Unicode should have never done things this way. This illustrated yet
another instance of the high levels of animosity that can occur within the filed of language and cultural
diversity standardisation.
During the Workshop, the CDFG experts were highly constructive and helpful and there was a very
respectful appreciation of some of the ideas being proposed by STF287 and a number of very useful
theoretical and historical insights provided by them to help the STF describe what the current and near
future options for things such as the coding of languages and dialects should be. Overall, the workshop
and meeting was a great success and strengthened the constructive relationship between STF287 and
the CDFG.
2
Participants
The participants at the meeting and Workshop were:
Wolf Arfvidson – representing CEN/TC 304
Martin Böcker – representing ETSI STF 285 and STF 300 as a guest presenter
Håvard Hjulstad – CDFG Secretary
Erkki Kolehmainen – representing NMB Finland CEN/TC 304 and the Unicode Consortium
Mark Wilhelm Küster – CDFG Chair
Karl Ivar Larsson – ETSI STF 300 guest presenter
Francoise Petersen – ETSI STF 287 guest
Mike Pluke – ETSI STF287
STF«STF» Mission Travel Report
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Audronė Stanislovaitienė – Institute of the Lithuanian Language (guest presenter)
Vytautas Zinkevičius – Institute of the Lithuanian Language (guest presenter)
3
Outstanding presentations
There were interesting presentation on the progress of all of the standards activities covered by the
CDFG. However, one of the most interesting presentations in the CDFG meeting was from some invited
Lithuanian guests. They gave a very impressive display of how today's software systems are unable to
handle the highly complex multi-diacritic characters in the Lithuanian alphabet. Some of the issues
identified were that most software treated these complex characters in such a way that words containing
them would get split instead of wrapped as whole words at the end of lines of text.
The resulting debate between different experts in character sets and alphabets got very heated and
showed that systems that Unicode has standardised makes such artefacts possible, with other experts
claiming that Unicode should have never done things this way. This illustrated yet another instance of the
high levels of animosity that can occur within the filed of language and cultural diversity standardisation.
4
Presentations/interventions from the STF
The STF Leader, as a regular member of the CDFG, made contributions throughout the duration of the
standard CDFG meeting on day one. However the main contribution occurred on the second day, when
the focus of the whole day was the work of STF287 and the content of the draft ETSI Guide. The STF
Leader presented sections of the document, and the other members of the workshop contributed their
expertise and opinions.
5
Stakeholders reaction/comments
The CDFG members continued to recognise the importance of the work of STF287. In particular, they
identified that STF287 was in aposition to make some practical operational recommendations about
language coding that have been causing standardisation bodies great difficulty in defining in a formal way.
6
Knowledge acquired / guidance received for the STF work
At the meeting, a number of very useful issues arose, such as the need to ensure that ICT systems are
able to handle the characters in all languages (such as Lithuanian) and these had an influence on the
content of the final STF287 ETSI Guide. There was also a very interesting debate on the issue of the
coding of languages that raised important issues about what is a language and what is a dialect. This
debate made it clear that existing standardisation efforts have almost all been focussed on standards
related to written languages and not spoken languages. It became clear that STF287 was in a good
position to begin to clarify when it is important to make very fine distinctions between different language
variants (e.g. in relation to defining the scope of speech recognition systems) and when it is not so
important (e.g. when a website can be presented in a "standard" version of a language that people who
may speak a range of language dialects can still easily understand).
.
7
Conclusion
The meeting and workshop represented another very productive dialogue between the CDFG and
STF287. On a number of points (see section 6), the STF gained some useful new insights that will help to
enhance the content of the STF's ETSI Guide. The CDFG also recognised that the work of STF287 could
represent a very effective way to provide some practical advice in areas that had been causing standards
bodies great difficulties over a number of years.