Scripts (continued)

Wed Sep 11 14:56:57 UTC 1996

        On Wed, 11 sept 1996 13:07 +0100, Girish Beehary wrote:

>Par egard pour les nombreux membres non-francophones sur cette liste, je vous
>demanderais de bien vouloir joindre une traduction a vos messages. Merci.

>Out of respect for the many non-french speaking members of this list, I would
>ask you to please add a translation to your emails. Thanks.

        My apologies (again) to the non-french speaking members of the
list. Here it is (with a translation of Dominique Thillaud's text I
answered):

>       PS: if it is difficult for you to read french, think that it was
>difficult for me to write it without diacriticals (not only in sanskrit does
>the anglo-saxon imperialism make problems :-)

        I totally agree with you, dear colleague! And we must urgently find
a solution to this problem before young french-speaking generations turn
totally illiterate...
        By the way: the solution could give us new highlights in the field
of indology because a "universal" latin transcription of sanskrit indeeds
exists (it was agreed upon during the Xth Orientalist Conference in Geneva
in 1894) and it actually uses a limited set of diacriticals. The computer
scientists could make a little bit of an effort or is this job more
difficult than to send the space shuttle in orbit :-)

        My apologies to the non-french speaking members of this list for
having used this language here.

        On Wed 11 sept. 1996 13:51 +0100, George Thompson wrote:

>I myself don't have anything personal against the French language, and in
>fact I welcome it to this list.

        Thank you very much / Merci beaucoup.

>But it seems strange to me to suggest that
>those young francophones who use English on the Internet are somehow
>"illetrees."  Au contraire....

        Not at all and you're right. But my point was that the very
domination of english in those new media makes indeed a threat to the
literacy of young (and some older) french-(german-, danish-, polish-
etc.)speaking generations because it's simply much easier to supress all
the accents (especially in french orthography which could be sometime, as
every french speaker/writer knows, especially ludicrous in some of its
rules). Nevertheless, french has a vast litterary tradition and some french
speakers feel strongly this threat against  their writing culture
(especially the quebecois, I was told, who are surrounded by the so-called
anglo-saxon imperialism).
        Now my other point was: is that really so difficult for the
computer industry to respect other cultural points of view than the
anglo-saxon one or is it just bad will? Consider this: there are some email
addresses inside our University's LAN I can't write to in correct french
because the gateways (Unix based?) do not allow french accentuation (and we
are in the heart of the Swiss french-speaking aera). Ridiculous...
       I think the computer industry now has to make a big effort of
reflection on this point or do we (indologists, french-, german-, hindi-,
japanese- etc  speakers) have to do it for them and work on matters that
are actually not our primary task?

        On Wed 11 sept. 1996, 14:18 +0100, Dominik Wujastyk wrote:

>Please note that this request does not represent the policy of this
>discussion list. The main languages of indological scholarship include
>French and German, and postings in these or other languages are welcome,
>with or without translation.  No disrespect to anyone will be implied by
>this.  Posters will need to make their own judgements about what
>limitations this might put on their readership.

>Postings in classical Sanskrit are *very* welcome.

        Thank you for this comment Dominik.

        On Wed 11 sept. 1996, 14:44 +0100, Gerard Huet wrote:

>Les rosbifs voudraient qu'on traduise,

        Ca c'est pas tres poli, cher Gerard. Je crois savoir que les
francais n'aiment pas non plus qu'on les appelle "froggies". / This is not
very polite, dear Gerard. I think that the french don't like to be called
froggies to.

>je ne sais quoi leur repondre

        Merci pour tes traductions qui sont parvenues juste avant la mienne
(mes excuses au reste du forum pour cette redondance). / Thanks for your
translations that came just before mine's (apologies to the rest of the
list for this redundancy).

>This is indeed an important new (to me) information on this transcription
>topic: what is exactly this convention, is it obsolete or is it close to
>actual indologist usage, what is the distance between this convention and
>say ITRANS, does it propose solutions to vedic letters and accents, does
>it work to the extension of devanagari to hindi, etc etc.
>Waiting for informed opinions on these topics
>/En esperant que les personnes bien informees se manifesteront

        Les normes de cette transliteration se trouvent chez Renou
"Grammaire Sanscrite. Tome I et II reunis" (la "grande" grammaire de Renou)
pp.XI a XVIII. Renou ne dit rien de la transliteration de l'accent en
revanche. Je ne sais quel est la distance entre cette transcriptionn et
l'ITRANS (dont j'aimerai bien trouver une description precise quelque part,
aide bienvenue).
        Cette transliteration est celle qui est utilisee dans la plupart
des travaux indologiques imprimes en romain apres la seconde guerre et
celle adoptee par les polices Normyn et Mytimes (pour Macintosh tout du
moins).
        The norms of this transliteration can be find  in Renou "Grammaire
Sanscrite. Tome I et II reunis" (the "big" Renou's grammar) pp. XI to
XVIII. Renou doesn't say anything about the transliteration of the accent.
I don't what the distance is between this transliteration and ITRANS (of
which I would like to find a precise description, help welcomed).
        This transliteration is the one most of the post second world war
printed works in Indology uses and it is the one used by the Normin and
Mytimes fonts (for the Mac at least).

Francois Voegeli
Fac. des lettres
Section de langues et civilisations orientales
Universite de Lausanne
BFSH 2
CH-1015

Tel.: (41.21) 692-2721
Fax.: (41.21) 692-3045
E-mail: Francois.Voegeli at orient.unil.ch