New Unicode Working Group: Message Formatting

[Philippe Verdy via Unicode]

You seem to have never seen how translation packages work and are used in
common projects (not just CLDR, but you could find them as well in
Wikimedia projects, or translation packages for lot of open source
packages).
The purpose is to allow translating the UI of these applications for user's
demanded language. Internally the application can use whatever
representation it needs : it may be in any language or could be just an
identifier, here this does not matter as they are independant of the final
translation rendered. In CLDR, identifiers are used (more or less based on
simplified English, sometimes abbreviations or conventional codes). In
typical .po(t) packages the identifiers are the source language from which
the software was built and its strings extracted, and to be replaced by
calling an API.
Various projects do not always use English as the source of their
translation and even if this is the source, the strings themselves are not
always the unique identifiers used.

If you send you package and need to print it, of course you'll print the
label in a chosern language. Nothing forbifs the print to display both
languages, i.e. two copies of the message translated in two languages
(English or German in your example; just look at printed noticed you find
in your purchase packages: the booklets frequently include multiple copies,
one per language, often a dozen for products imported from China to Europe;
even food is frequently labeled in several languages for international
brands).

If needed, products descriptions or source and delivery addresses will be
accessible via an online web app by printing a barcode or QRcode on the
label (they will be converted to an URI): an URI by itself has no language,
it's also an identifier, allowing to retrive the texts in multiple
languages or the language of user's choice.

So your question is non-sense with the example you give.

Le sam. 11 janv. 2020 à 21:21, wjgo_10009 at btinternet.com via Unicode <
unicode at unicode.org> a écrit :

> A person in England, who knows no German, wants to send the parcel to a
> person in Germany, who knows no English.
>
> The person in England wants to send a message about the delivery to the
> person in Germany..
>
> > English: “The package will arrive at {time} on {date}.”
>
> The person want to send the message by email.
>
> > German: “Das Paket wird am {date} um {time} geliefert.”
>
> Where does the translation of the text take place please, and by whom or
> by which computer?
>
> During the actual  transmission from the computer in England to the
> computer in Germany, is the text of the string in English, or German, or
> in a language-independent form please?
>
> ----
>
> If the parcel were being sent from France to Germany by a person who
> knows only French, during the transmission of the message about the
> parcel, is the text of the string in French, or English, or German, or
> in a language-independent form please?
>
> William Overington
>
> Saturday 11 January 2020
>
>
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