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Subject:Re: Translations and addresses From:David Neeley <dbneeley -at- gmail -dot- com> To:techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com Date:Wed, 6 Jan 2010 09:18:46 +0200
Before moving to join my wife and stepson in Ukraine, as you might
imagine we exchanged mail on several occasions.
Although English addresses would reach the destination here
eventually, it was much simpler to include both English and Russian
Cyrillic addresses on a package or envelope. For physical mail, after
all, it is relatively unlikely that the mail sorters and handlers will
all recognize the English address information, especially if their
primary language is not one which uses Latin characters.
(The largest issue may actually be in the provision of adequate
numbers of address fields, as addresses here tend to use many more
than Western forms permit. For example, our address has a street name,
a complex name, a "house" and apartment number, a city region name,
the city name, the oblast (state), and the zip code. It is very
interesting to try to cram that into American forms, let me tell you!
I also have an Internet acquaintance who lives in one of the Arab
countries, with no formal mail address at all--only directions to find
the house! Addresses can indeed be complicated.)
That said, I would be quite surprised if most mail officials in the
French system did not at least recognize the primary English address
terms.
However, given the rather infamous sensitivity of many French toward
the "corruption" of the language with English words, I would imagine
that providing both forms of addresses might be in order.
That said, other Europeans in non-French speaking regions may find
English addresses easier to comprehend than French ones, given that
English is the largest second language in the world today.
Besides, what language is the documentation itself in? If English,
then an English language address would seem a non-issue for the users.
David
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