Title: Observations on Cultural Adaptability Requirements
Source: Erkki I. Kolehmainen, Finland (STY/FDCA)
Date: 1997-12-19
Action: For discussion at the JTC1 CAW, Ottawa, January 1998
I would like to clearly expand the coverage from the traditional cultural elements which, however, provide the basis for further development. These elements include e.g.
- the character sets and their ordering rules (both within a nation/language and in a multinational/multilingual environment),
- any translitteration or such methods between languages on the one side and character sets on the other side,
- the presentation of dates and times and other such elements that depend on country and language.
The implementation of the support for the traditional cultural elements (on which e.g. CEN TC304 has done some work for which there has so far been no single JTC1 forum) tends to allow one to work in his/her cultural environment and with mostly like partners. The emergence of Electronic Commerce as part of the GII, however, introduces a number of extremely important new requirements into the game.
These requirements stem from the fact that EC will be truly global. As a consequence, the potential buyer, after having used some kind of a search engine to find potential sellers, will be presented a choice of offers from many different countries with many different cultural elements that the buyer cannot be expected to be aware of; the search engine itself will already have to have multilingual capabilities.
In the following, I'll try to give some examples of the kind of things that a non-expert user cannot be expected to be aware of or even fully understand:
- The pricing information in a given currency inclusive/exlusive of any taxes. As a side remark, in Europe, one should also recall the fact that during the transition period to the European Monetary Union currency, the euro, the prices will have to be given in parallel in two denominations, the euro and the former, traditional local currency. Furthermore, e.g. in Finland, if the base price is in FIM, the equivalent price in EUR will have to be given with three decimals, whereas a base price in EUR will only be given with two decimals (i.e., in euros and cents).
- The different measures and weights and their presentation. As a further source of confusion, e.g. the gallon (and quart) is quite different in the US and in the Great Britain. To differentiate between them, when the need is foreseen, one uses the terms US and Imperial gallon but this distinction is not expressly made in the two countries. - The system should present also the local equivalent.
- The size classification for e.g. the various types of garments and shoes, etc., for which the system should present also the local equivalent.
- If the consumer can rely in his/her own country on mandatory listing of such ingredients that may be harmful to him/her, he/she should be informed of the differences (i.e. those ingredients that for the product category are not mandatory to list) in the country of the seller. This could be extended to the terms of warranty.
The above is meant to be a somewhat random but representative glimpse into what is ahead of us.
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I believe that we should also discuss, how to expand and improve the Cultural Registry concept that CEN TC304 is working on. We should also discuss the logical division of work between JTC1 and the national/regional organizations, where, I believe, JTC1 should concentrate on "how" based on the regional work on "what". Thus, the regional/national organizations would provide their input on what localization is required to meet their recognized needs, whereas JTC1 would work on how to internationalize a product in order for it to meet the localization requirements, and the regional/national organizations would again collect and make the data on the cultural elements available in a Register maintained by/for JTC1.
Best regards,
Erkki I Kolehmainen
SUOMEN TIEDONSIIRTOYHDISTYS STY RY
THE FINNISH DATA COMMUNICATION ASSOCIATION FDCA
Salomonkatu 17 A, 10th floor, FIN - 00100 HELSINKI, FINLAND
phone: +358 9 4763 0301, fax: +358 9 4763 0399