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Abstract

Issues and Proposals for Language Tags

Jennifer DeCamp - MITRE Corporation

Intended Audience: Manager, Software Engineer, Systems Analyst, Marketer
Session Level: Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced

Language tags are used to designate the language in word processing and in web pages. The tags facilitate the use of tools such as search engines, automatic hyphenation, spell checking, grammar checking, dictionaries, and machine translation. However, the current International Standards Organization (ISO) standards for language tags cover relatively few languages. In addition, there are separate three-letter codes for the library community and the rest of the world (see ISO-639). There is also an ISO two-letter standard. More comprehensive tag sets exist, such as by SIL's Ethnologue; however, there are additional issues with such sets, such as consistent level of detail. This panel presents the issues with language tags and the proposals being considered by ISO, including use of the Ethnologue tag set, use of a new four-letter code, use of a language tag set registry, and revision of the three-letter codes. It also solicits input from the Unicode community on the best approach for obtaining a comprehensive tag set. Panel members will include representatives from ISO, the Ethnologue, the Unicode Consortium, the U.S. Government, and industry.


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UnicodeIUC19
Unicode Standard Conference Board Past Conferences Call for Papers Sponsors Showcase
Registration Accommodation Travel Program Talks and Papers Next Conference
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