--On Sunday, 09 March, 2014 14:07 -0400 Ted Lemon <ted.lemon@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > On Mar 9, 2014, at 2:05 PM, Ted Lemon <ted.lemon@xxxxxxxxxxx> > wrote: >> If we are all going to learn a new language, why not Chinese? > > (BTW, there's a certain irony in the use of "Chinese" to refer > to a single language, of which I am well aware, but the > commonality to the writing system is really what I consider > most important.) Because of that irony, switching to "Chinese" might help us eliminate the need for decision-making in f2f meetings and move things back to the mailing lists. Of course, so would anything else that doesn't involve very high quality, technically-sensitive, parallel translation. Some people who have experienced attempts at the latter claim it is impossible - a recent piece about translation of literature in the NY Times is helpful in understanding the problem but, especially for literature, while language translates more or less well, culture rarely translates at all. Sometimes technical literature works better, but, because the precision requirements are often higher, sometimes not. john