[I18nrp] Internationalization and Localization (was: Re: charter -01)

[John C Klensin <[e-mail]>]

Jiankang,

Let me add a bit to Scott's response and perhaps start a
discussion that will clarify all of our thinking.   As I
indicated in an earlier note, I don't think these issues need to
be resolved to get to a decent charter for the directorate even
(or especially) if they constitute work items for that
directorate...

--On Thursday, August 16, 2018 09:43 +0800 Jiankang Yao
<[e-mail]> wrote:

>>> Internationalization Directorate (i18ndir) Charter
>> 
>> "Internationalization" sometimes drifts into areas that I
>> would describe as "localization". That is, use in some
>> local-only context. Does anyone else see this distinction,

> Thanks for pointing it out.
> Actually, I share some similar ideas with you when I did some
> research in idn, eai and Internationalization many years ago.

While I have departed a bit from them below (and probably
wouldn't try to write them in quite the same way were I doing it
today), you might find reading the definitions of
internationalization and localization in RFC 6365 helpful, at
least to get a different perspective.
 
> I am a Chinese speaker. If we talk about Internationalization
> in general in our culture, not in IETF scope,
> Internationalization means to use English/latin character to
> reach outside China, localization is to mean how to use
> Chinese Character to adapt to the local needs.

How would you describe the use of, e.g., Arabic script
characters in China?   And is use of Latin characters to write
Hanyu Pinyin a localization or an internationalization matter?
Is the distinction between Simplified and Traditional Chinese
characters a localization matter or an internationalization one?
Does the observation that CNNIC has sometimes argued that they
are two separate scripts and that several parties in Japan have
argued that Japanese and Chinese should be considered separate
scripts despite the large number of overlapping characters
change those answers at all (noting that Unicode, which unifies
not only Simplified and Traditional Chinese characters but
CJK[V], may have a different answer).  I'm not disagreeing with
you about practice in China, about which you are far more expert
than I am, just pointing out how slippery these terms become
when one tries to think about things globally... and globally
either all at once or as a sequence of local/global distinctions.

> For Non-English speaker, Internationalization is to reach the
> English speaker, localization is to reach the local people of
> non-English. For English speaker, Internationalization is to
> reach the non-English speaker, localization is to reach the
> local people of English. 

This really bothers me because it seems to imply that having a
Chinese speaker communicate with an Arabic one, a Tamil speaker
interact with a Hindi one, or even communication between a
speaker of French and one of German, are irrelevant and that the
only issues of interest are 
  <some local language> <-> English

I hope that was not what you intended; certainly it is not what
some of the rest of us mean.

> So I am sure that the wording
> "Internationalization " in IETF is invented by some native
> English IETF expert.

It wasn't invented in the IETF at all but adopted (somewhat
reluctantly by some of us) from terminology that started being
used in the character coding community (including Unicode but
not limited to it) long before the IETF became active in this
area.  I don't know if whoever proposed the terminology was a
native Engish speaker or not; there are at least a few likely
other possibilities.

> Back to the wording of Internationalization in IETF, my
> understanding is that Internationalization is how to use
> Unicode which includes almost all local characters;
> localization is how to use the local encoding such as GB2312.

Certainly not how I've used the latter term.  Localization may
well be in Unicode and becomes quite relevant when specific
scripts (and, more important, specific language-script
combinations) require special rendering, case mapping, or other
procedures to make presentation or comparison operations work
well.
 
> Yes, Internationalization  sometimes includes  some local-only
> context. For an example, in IDN, we sometimes need to consider
> Chinese character (simplified one, tradtional one), Arabic
> character(right to left); these characters may need to have
> some special rules to deal to be adapt to the local needs.

See above.
 
>> and if so, is it something to be concerned about?

> We need to refine the definition of Internationalization and
> loccalization in IETF.

I can't speak for either my co-author or the IESG but, if you
think that is useful and have some good ideas where to start, I
think an update to RFC 6365 may be in order.  Again, I don't
think we should hold the directorate charter up while we resolve
those definitional issues.

best,
   john