[tei-council] xml:lang="eng"

Thu Dec 8 17:14:53 EST 2011

> as an inquiring mind, may I ask : what does it mean if you assign
> multiple values?
>
> <p marc:lang="en fr"> would mean bits of the p are in english and other
> bits in french? or all of it is in franglais?

The former. But lang is usually assigned at the <text> or <div> level 
rather than <p>,  more or less on the same principles as the MARC 041 
field (for a work with multiple languages significantly present, record
all of them in this field). Partly a  byproduct of requiring @lang on <text>, and 
partly a result of having many texts in mixed language which we
lack the resources to separate out into individual lang'd paragraphs, 
items, or (often) segs. Even getting the keyers to identify primary
languages is a chore. For a while one group were labelling everything
in Latin as lang="ita" and another was labelling it "fre eng" (!).
Even librarians get it wrong (I found several ProQuest EEBO catalog
records that labelled everything in Old English as "Irish"). Identifying
languages at lower levels is simply not practical.

   <text lang="sco lat">
      <body>
        <div1 type="original" lang="lat">
          <div2 type="book" n="1">
          <l>arma virumque cano, Troiae qui primus ab oris</l>
          <l>Italiam fato profugus Laviniaque venit</l>
          <l>litora, multum ille et terris iactatus et alto</l>
          <l>vi superum, saevae memorem Iunonis ob iram,</l>
          <l>multa quoque et bello passus, dum conderet urbem</l>
          <l>inferretque deos Latio; genus unde</l>
          <l>Albanique patres atque altae moenia Romae.</l>

        <div1 type="translation" lang="sco">
          <div2 type="book" n="1">
          <l>The batalis and the man I wil discrive,</l>
          <l>Fra Troys boundis first that fugitive</l>
          <l>By fait to Ytail come and cost Lavyne ;</l>
          <l>Our land and sey kachit with mekil pyne,</l>
          <l>By fors of goddis abuse, from euery steid,</l>
          <l>Of cruell Juno throu ald remembrit fede.</l>
          <l>Gret pane in batail sufferit he alsso,</l>
          <l>Or he his goddis brocht in Latio,</l>
          <l>And belt the cite, fra quham, of nobill fame,</l>
          <l>The Latyne pepill takyn heth thar name,</l>
          <l>And eik the faderis, princis of Alba,</l>
          <l>Cam, and the wallaris of gret Rome alswa. </l>
          ...
          </div2>
       </div1>
     </body>
   </text>

pfs

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Paul Schaffner | PFSchaffner at umich.edu | http://www.umich.edu/~pfs/
316-C Hatcher Library N, Univ. of Michigan, Ann Arbor MI 48109-1190
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