ROME: 14 July 2011 -- Once again a 'follow up' item,
since every now and again a topic or theme seems to provoke
more than the usual number of responses, as has been the
case with austraLasia #2887 ('A fly on the wall or a fly in
the ointment').
One response heads off in the direction
of 'official languages', suggesting: "I have been concerned about the jumble
of different terms used in our Salesian documents for years. After reading your piece austraLasia
#2887, I looked up world languages at this site http://www.krysstal.com/spoken.html
and found that according to that site: Mandarin is spoken by more people than
any other(1151 Million, that is 1.151 billion) English is next with 1000 m OR 1 b; Italian is 24th and spoken by a mere
62 m people". The writer then goes on to propose(and as he
says, not with 'thong in cheek') that the official
languages of the Congregation be Mandarin (for
evangelisation purposes, and the future) and English
(because most educators and philanthropists speak English).
This view is hotly debated by a
Spanish-speaking confrere who said (in Spanish, of course!):
"talk of 'official language' is ideology-speak, and often
driven by an anglo-oriented ideology at that. He goes
on to say, since I sent him the previous comment, that maybe
it was really English rather than Mandarin being proposed,
and that another glance at the 'krystal' site indicated
above shows that "Spanish is third in the list of
most-spoken languages, with 500 million speakers". If
we want to "restrict ourselves to the Salesian
Congregation, it is by far the most spoken language in the
Congregation" (he is correct - we can support that
assertion with plenty of evidence).
Another response takes up the OPP EPP and
similar acronyms mentioned in the original article,
suggesting that "The answer is simple: stop using Italian
acronyms, except in Italian. Always give the name of the
activity in full, and leave each language time to provide
a suitable acronym [for example Philippines North
refer to SPP instead of OPP - Strategic Provincial Plan,
instead of horrible things like 'Organic Provincial Plan'] once
the activity is a familiar one". This comment did not
come from the Philippines - I have simply added the SFF
reference as support for the idea proposed.
Another direction altogether, and one in
some ways closer to the issues that were actually being
raised in #2887, was this: "I was trying to make head and
tail of Strenna 2011 (Acts n. 409). To do that I have been
doing a 'mind map' of it. At this point I feel
exasperated. I find the whole piece complicated. I found
it difficult to find internal connections. The issue that
popped up in my mind is "accessibility". Will confreres
really take time to read through it? Won't they stop
and say: "For heaven's sake what does it want to say!!
Or maybe it is just me. I'll persevere. I just have no. 3
(Aspects which have special significance in vocational
animation and proposal) left. I'm reading the letter for
the second time because it is related to my work. I am
sending this email not just to vent my frustration but
also because you're involved in communication. Can't we
make the documents an easy piece of work like how the
streets and avenues of New York are arranged rather than a
maze? ".
Interesting comment that one. The telling
comment is the last sentence, since it suggests that
documents must have very obvious order. My original comment
read thus: "But
we have now become aware that web pages contain data
as well, and this 'data' is less accessible and mostly not
linked, and machines
can't understand it - only humans can". The commentator
on Strenna 2011 is also saying that in some cases not even
human beings can read them! I would suggest that in
the case of an item like the Strenna presentation, or others
like it, it needs a number of checks before being
published. To the content and general language checks
that obviously must be done, in a 'semantic web' world, we
now need a third check - how is the document structured, and
how is the data it contains structured - and these are
really two separate issues and activities.
Oh what a complicated world we live
in! But the reality is, if we are going to publish
material for a very wide audience, we need to do this kind
of thing. Feel free to comment further if you wish. _________________ AustraLasia
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