i18n
One of the unexpectedly great things about this blog is the international character of its readership. While most of the people reading this are, like me, British, we've got Americans, Russians, Australians, Swedes, a Bangladeshi or two, and no doubt others I'm forgetting.
This complicates the process of writing, though, since it makes it more difficult to decide how much common ground I can assume between me and my readers, and how best to express myself. I'd appreciate your help on setting some sort of policy.
I think the only way this thing will continue to work is if I write about things that interest me, some of which will be of mainly local interest, so expect the occasional post about UK politics and so on. I'll try to provide explanatory links, as I did here - is that OK? Given that I'm a Brit, writing for an audience that's mostly other Brits, I make no apology for writing in British English; but the language of the Web is US English, and the differences are occasionally significant. Would it be helpful to provide occasional translations? Suppose I were to talk about an off-licence: would it be helpful or annoying to write "(liquor store)" afterwards? Actually, after four years in Scotland, I'd be more likely to say "off-sales" these days, which adds an additional layer of complexity. How about units? I tend to think in a godawful mess of Imperial and SI units, depending on what I'm measuring¹ and how big it is. Is it helpful to provide conversions, say "10st/140lb/63.5kg", or is that an insult to your ability to use Google Calculator? How about climbing grades (which are notoriously difficult to translate, because different grading systems take different things into account). Would it help anyone if I were to describe Cenotaph Corner as "E1 5c (approx F6a+², US 5.10b or a hard Aussie 18)" rather than simply E1 5c?
Opinions eagerly sought. Also, if you reading this from somewhere exotic, please say hi!
¹ A Canadian friend tells me that Canadians use metric units for everything except personal measurements: height, weight and penis size.
² I'm wondering if I've done that conversion right: it looks far harder than that from the bottom... I guess climbing indoors (where my experience of French grades comes from) is a fundamentally different experience from trad climbing outdoors.
This complicates the process of writing, though, since it makes it more difficult to decide how much common ground I can assume between me and my readers, and how best to express myself. I'd appreciate your help on setting some sort of policy.
I think the only way this thing will continue to work is if I write about things that interest me, some of which will be of mainly local interest, so expect the occasional post about UK politics and so on. I'll try to provide explanatory links, as I did here - is that OK? Given that I'm a Brit, writing for an audience that's mostly other Brits, I make no apology for writing in British English; but the language of the Web is US English, and the differences are occasionally significant. Would it be helpful to provide occasional translations? Suppose I were to talk about an off-licence: would it be helpful or annoying to write "(liquor store)" afterwards? Actually, after four years in Scotland, I'd be more likely to say "off-sales" these days, which adds an additional layer of complexity. How about units? I tend to think in a godawful mess of Imperial and SI units, depending on what I'm measuring¹ and how big it is. Is it helpful to provide conversions, say "10st/140lb/63.5kg", or is that an insult to your ability to use Google Calculator? How about climbing grades (which are notoriously difficult to translate, because different grading systems take different things into account). Would it help anyone if I were to describe Cenotaph Corner as "E1 5c (approx F6a+², US 5.10b or a hard Aussie 18)" rather than simply E1 5c?
Opinions eagerly sought. Also, if you reading this from somewhere exotic, please say hi!
¹ A Canadian friend tells me that Canadians use metric units for everything except personal measurements: height, weight and penis size.
² I'm wondering if I've done that conversion right: it looks far harder than that from the bottom... I guess climbing indoors (where my experience of French grades comes from) is a fundamentally different experience from trad climbing outdoors.