• CWA Part 3

1.6. Factual Elements

Plan:

• Underline the need for context-specific factual information ("variations" in CLDR-terms, scope in TM terms)
• Categorize typographic conventions into:
  • Elements that exist in CLDR, but need eGov-specific variations (example: decimal separator for UK)
  • Elements that do not currently exist in the CLDR / in LDML, but should (with rationale)
  • Elements that are valuable resources for human users, but not suitable for the CLDR
• Integrate the issue of name ordering into those categories (three types of names: formal, normal and informal)

1.6.2. Typographic Conventions

Typographic conventions are a large class of soft cultural elements. They are closely related to current locale data in that many of them can usually be unambiguously described with strategies that are essentially the same as traditional cultural elements. The CLDR contains the specification of various forms of typographic conventions that represent the normal convention in the appropriate locale. However, when multilingual information resources are published in a number of different locales, differences between the conventions used in each local can cause confusion if someone attempts to read a resource that was designed for a different locale. For this reason, organizations may decide to proscribe conventions to be used for the production of multilingual information resources that reduce such ambiguities. The Publications Office of the European Union maintains an "Interinstitutional style guide" that lists precisely this type of information for most major European languages. However, as this information is not in a machine processable format, it is not possible to use these conventions in the same way as can be done for the CLDR data.

1.6.2.1. Number formatting

One area where typographic conventions have great significance is in the formatting of numbers. If the significance of the characters that separate the different elements of a number are misunderstood then the number can be seriously misinterpreted. If the number formatting separators used are interpreted by a person familiar with the standard usage in the locale then the numbers should be interpreted correctly. All of this usage is already contained in the "number/ symbols/ group" and the "numbers/ symbols/ decimal" elements for each locale of the CLDR.

In Europe, several countries use "." as the "group separator" (e.g. for separating the digits greater than a thousand from those less than a thousand) and several others use a space (preferably a no-break-space). The United Kingdom is exceptional in that it uses "," as the "group separator". This usage is potentially very confusing to those from other European countries as this is the character that most other countries use as the "decimal separator". The United Kingdom is also unique in that it uses "." as the decimal separator, which is the "group separator" in many other countries. (There are also variations in other countries, e.g., ":" has defined usage as a decimal separator in Sweden.) In a multi-locale region such as Europe these major differences between the normal usage of these separators can cause confusion for a multilingual citizen of the European Union reading a text that is written according to the existing United Kingdom "English" conventions. This confusion caused by the different number presentation conventions may also cause some potentially serious misinterpretations to occur. For example, the number 123,456 can be interpreted as a number slightly less than 124or one greater than 123 thousand depending on whether the "," is interpreted as a "decimal separator" or as a "group separator". As English is the most commonly spoken second language in Europe, there is a high risk that citizens of Europe will encounter significant difficulties if they interpret numbers according to their own locale conventions when reading English language documents that have been written using the standard English locale convention that is currently in the CLDR.

To avoid the mistakes that can occur from the misinterpretation of the "decimal separator" and "group separator" within their multi-locale region, the Publications Department of the European Union have defined conventions for the "group separator" and "decimal separator" that should be used for official documents when produced in the different languages of the European Union. These conventions attempt to minimise the risks of confusion that can occur between the differerent national conventions in separator usage whilst at the same time minimizing the deviations from the normal locale specific conventions.

The Interinstitutional Style Guide defines the following variations to the standard conventions of the CLDR:

• The "number/ symbols/ group" separator is standardized as a space for all locales in Europe. This is a variation for those languages that have "." as the "group separator" and for the United Kingdom.
• The "number/ symbols/ decimal" separator defined in the CLDR is to be used for all locales except for the United Kingdom. For the United Kigdom there are two variations according to the context in which the numbers are being used. These are:
  • Variation 1: The character "," should be used for the "number/ symbols/ decimal" separator for "all English-language editions of the Official Journal" and its use is described as "acceptable for multilingual publications, statistical works and works where the tables are composed once for all language versions".
  • Variation 2: The standard CLDR convention "." should be used for all other situations.

To ensure that the correct conventions are used, the context of usage must be identified (e.g. is this being used in an English-language edition of the Occial Journal or is it being used in a table that will only be composed once and used in a number of versions of the document for different European locales). Once the context is known, the special European conventions or the CLDR conventions will be used according to the above rules - with the regular CLDR conventions being used if not specified in the above rules.

1.6.2.2. Monetary formatting

For the amounts, the number formatting applies.

In official use, the currency symbol €, when permitted, is floating in Englishg, i.e., immediately preceding the amount, similar to the UK pound "£", US dollar "$" and Japanese yen "¥" signs. However, in general use in most other countries than the UK, the currency symbols in current general use – even "€" – follow the amount. In these cases, the currency symbol is separated from the amount by a space (preferably a no-break-space).

The currency code is normally used instead of the symbol in transactions and legal texts. In legal text, the code may precede (in English, Latvian and Maltese) or follow (in all other countries) the amount with a separating space. In general use, however, the currency code often precedes the amount. The currency codes defined in ISO 4217 also cover other value elements than regular currencies.

If spelled out, the singular form "euro" is to be used with any amount in formal EU documents in most languages – certain countries have applied for an exception - but the form "euros" is recommended for more informal text.

Thus, variation will also occur in all of these CLDR definitions.

1.6.2.3. Other Style Guide related conventions covered in the CLDR or that could easily fit in that structure

In addition to the number formatting above, e.g., the placement of the minus sign for negative numbers and also the formatting of scientific (exponential) numbers and percent and permille expressions have been defined.

Two levels of quotation mark pairs, outer and inner, are currently defined, and they are expected to be used alternatively. In addition, e.g., list element separators have been defined.

The CLDR contains only the most commonly used paper size for each locale. It contains the very minimum information on the measurement system in use, but the expansion of this has een already discussed.

It should be noted that the CLDR contains the commonly used names of countries and regions instead of the official names (which could, in principle, be included using the chosen variant mechanism).

The spacing before and after the punctuation marks is not currently defined in the CLDR, although it is language and culture dependent.

1.6.2.4. Other Style Guide related conventions that would not readily fit in the CLDR structure

Many of the typing conventions, including the strategies of emphasis, could not easily be covered by locale definitions.

The way to use references, quotations, footnotes and tables is currently too text processing system dependent to be covered by locale data. These, however, need to be defined in text form for common understanding.

The current proof correction marks are for manual use only, although they, too, need to be unified, especially when centralized publication facilities are being used.

The list of popular fonts is subject to constant evolution.

1.6.2.5. Other Style Guide related conventions that would benefit from a repository other than CLDR

The Style Guide defines a preferred structure for publications with specific guidance for several topics, such as:

• Design of covers and information bits on it
• ditto for title pages
• Preliminary pages and end-matter (SG, 5.3)
• Preferred design of tables of contents
• Preferred design of bibliographies
• Preferred design of the index
• Layout and presentation of main text (SG, 5.4)
• Preferred design of lists (numbered, unnumbered etc.)

This information would best be made available to all interested users in the form of templates. It is understood that at least initially they would have to be text processing system dependent, but progress is to be expected in this field. These localized templates could possibly also be included in the install packs, since they would have a significant market.

1.6.3. Personal names

ISO TC 37 "Terminology and other language and content resources" is in the process of starting a new work item on proper names that could conceivably touch all of the following areas related to personal names.

The use of personal names can be addressed in parallel from three points of view:

1.6.3.1. How to spell a person's name right

The right for proper spelling of personal names has been addressed by a number of worldwide or multi-lateral and even bi-lateral treaties between European countries. The implementation of these treaties is, however, in its infancy, even for a treaty that has been signed already in 1973 (CIEC/ICCS convention No. 14). The legal implications of the resulting lack of interoperability between various registers, particularly the public registers, are significant. Since the Universal Character Set (ISO/IEC 10646 and The Unicode Standard) have removed the technological obstacles that were prevalent in the past, there is no justification not to proceed in defining the multilingual European Latin character repertoire for eGovernment and the transliteration schemes for at least the scripts that are used for the official languages of the European Union. Attempts have been made to define European repertoires, notably in CWA 13873:2000, Multilingual European Subsets in ISO/IEC 10646-1, but that would clearly need to be updated and refined.

1.6.3.2. How to express the name properly in a given context

The names in Europe have different structures and often consist of multiple elements that are either required or can be left out in a given context. The elements include, in addition to or in lieu of the "ordinary" given and family names, patronymicons and/or matronymicons and various common name affixes. The ordering of these is often dependent on the usage environment: formal, normal or informal. Furthermore, capitalization of the first letter of a name component is culture dependent, and in certain cultures the name or the primary identifying element is routinely written in capital letters in both formal and normal usage.

Whether and how the name will change after marriage is defined in the national laws, and the rules are far from identical. It can only be stated that a person's name may change either at his or her own initiative or following formal regulations covering the changes in the person's family status.

An initial approach to name ordering has been under discussion in the CLDR technical committee, but no decisions have been made yet. Experimentation in this area would be most welcome, and it could contribute significantly to the ISO TC 37 work mentioned earlier.

1.6.3.3. How to address a person properly in a given context

The addressing of a person at the right level of formalism in a given situation can be a delicate question. It is relatively easy to define the rules (CLDR-like) for addressing a person in a given language/country in situations categorized as formal, normal or informal, but the identification of these situations falls into the area of soft cultural elements. Too much or too little formality are both seen as offending by many recipients. If the titles of the person are known, he or she expects them to be used properly.

The salutations used in the beginning and at the end of various types of letters vary also considerably from country to country and language to language. The underlying issues are here similar to but somewhat less severe than those in the case of addressing a person.

1.7. Soft Cultural Elements

1.7.1. Methodology

Factual elements are context dependent, but their concrete values are well defined for a given setting. Soft cultural elements on the other hand are almost by definition difficult to describe with precision and will always abstract from potentially diverging personal views. Furthermore, their description must be formalized to the extend that information about them becomes machine-readable and interchangeable.

Following the theory of structural anthropology [1] the approach chosen is following structuralist lines, though not dogmatically. The positive (+) or negative (-) judgement on certain key properties in selected elements are identified in the scope of a given cultural setting and optionally a certain context. This procedure is exemplarily demonstrated for colour conventions and then applied to other categories of soft cultural elements.

This CWA does not make any claims as to the epistemological nature of these binary opposition. In the scope of this CWA they serve exclusively as tools for a formal description of those soft cultural elements.

[1] Claude Lévi-Strauss: Anthropologie structurale(1958)

1.7.2. Description of Soft Cultural Elements

A soft cultural element codifies a value judgement that a certain culture or subculture predominantly shares in a given context. These can be preferences for certain ways of interaction — e.g. formal vs. informal or personal vs. institutional —, for certain moral values, colours, gestures etc.. Virtually always, such judgements will be context dependent, as a certain behaviour can be considered to be perfectly admissible, say, in a private context and be deeply offensive if performed in public in the very same cultural setting.

“Predominantly” implies that such a value judgement may not be shared by all members of that culture to an equal degree. For example, even in cultural settings that generally prefer formal modes of interaction some individuals and even whole organizations will instead favour informal interactions.

Value judgements of the predominant culture in a given administrative unit may differ significantly from that of subcultures — e.g., of immigrant communities — that live in the same geographic area. These communities can constitute cultural settings of their own, possibly (but not necessarily) using a different language. A cultural setting can thus be related to an administrative unit, but be more specific (e.g. describing the culture of the Muslim community in the UK or that of the Christian community in Turkey). When the following sample tables lists countries as representing cultural settings, this is thus an oversimplification that helps to stress the fact that the sample data in this CWA is for illustrative purposes only.

1.7.3. Collecting data

The most significant issues in bringing together this information are the scope of the content of the resource and the way in which it is structured. At a simplistic level, the scope of the resource is to include “significant” positive and negative associations of meaning for any cultural setting. The two major issues to be decided in delivering this scope are how an association could be judged to be “significant” and also the ways in which cultural setting could be defined. The significance issue can be resolved by use of the existing Unicode voting methods for agreeing that items should be included in the CLDR and / or by classifying existing such information in the context of a larger network of eGovernment resources. The choice of how to define cultural settings is more complex and will require individual judgement. In some regions, quite a number of the value judgements are primarily related to a specific religion. Another set of associations may be specific to a ethnicity. It is possible and in some eGovernment scenarios certainly advisable to add religions and ethnicities to the linguistic, national and regional settings that are already identified in the CLDR. In particular, a government body may want to address specific religious or ethnic communities in its area with specifically targeted publications or services.

Adding this information to the CLDR itself might be inadvisable, however, for the following reasons:

• issues of ethnicity and religion are often associated with strong opinions that might make agreement on data related to these factors extremely difficult;
• when the ways that this new CLDR resource is likely to be used are considered, it is difficult to imagine that many services will be localized to meet the needs of a specific religious or ethnicities.

It is probable that services will primarily be localized for the same language, national and regional groupings that are already identified in the CLDR. The only practical way in which the issues of racial and religious derived colour associations can be addressed in system design is to take account of the predominant religions and ethnicities that are prevalent in a particular country or region. Fortunately, the existing sources of information related to value judgements in regions and countries already reflect these cultural and religious influences.

The data that the sample tables contain is for illustrative purposes only and is neither complete nor necessarily correct.

1.7.4. Colour Conventions

In each culture, there are specific meanings associated with colours and these meanings frequently vary between different cultures. There are a number of colours that have common meanings across a wide range of cultures. For example, bright red has a worldwide association with danger by 96% of a diverse worldwide sample and with war by 88% [1]. However, the prospect of recording every possible association as part of the soft cultural registry is an enormous task and one that may be subject to a lot of dispute as many of the possible meanings associated with colours may not be universally accepted. What would be useful would be to record those colour associations that have quite strong negative, and to a lesser extent, positive associations. It would also be highly valuable to indicate the sometimes large cross-cultural differences in associated meaning.

A resource that captures significant associations of negative and positive meanings with colours and indicates how these associations differed across cultures provides valuable support to the design of visually presented services. This can be used to avoid using colours in ways that accidentally give offence and, to a lesser extent would assist in creating positive emotions for the service users. This resource could, at one level, be used to automatically identify potential cultural mismatches between the design of a localized version of a service and the cultural expectations of the planned audience for that service. It can also be used in design support tools to provide real-time guidance to creators of eGovernment publications.

Having decided on the scope of this new colour related resource, the final issue is to decide on a way of representing this information in the CLDR and the context of the eGovernment ontology. The table below uses colour as the primary organising dimension. Such a structure would allow a designer or a software application to use the table to generate two lists of countries, one with negative associations and one with positive ones, for each colour that is used in the service. This list of countries could then be compared with those for which the service has been localized and any warnings of negative associations (or highlighting of positive associations) could be generated. This approach is paradigmatic for the general structuralist analysis and description of soft cultural elements:

The above is only a small subset of the possible set of colour associations. However, some examples have been included to illustrate that it is possible that the same colour can have both strong negative and strong positive associations for the same culture (e.g. see the colour red for China). It may also be the case that a colour may only have strong positive associations and no negative associations, which appears to be the case for the colour pink.

An alternative way of using this new resource would be for the service designer, or software tool, to specify the regions or countries for which the service has been localized and receive a list of colours to avoid (those with negative associations) and those with very positive associations. A table with the colour and culture columns reversed would meet this need. In the CLDR there is a precedent for representing the same resource in two alternate presentations - "Territory-Language Information" and "Language-Territory Information" and this application seems to be another good situation where this approach is justified.

An issue that deserves a significant debate is the degree to which it is important to reflect a few strong religious colour associations that may pose a significant risk that failing to consider them might offend potential users of a service that is targeting users in any geographic region. The introduction of religious groupings would be a new departure for the CLDR and might, as suggested above, be an issue that would raise concern and controversy.

Another important factor that needs to be taken into account in populating a table of colour associations such as the one above is whether it is anticipated that the colour association data will mainly be used in the context of leisure related services or business related services. The reason for considering this factor relates to a study of the use of factory machines in mainland China [2] which indicated that in the working context of a factory environment the workers were perfectly familiar with the international standard (IEC73) meaning of "danger" for the colour red but, outside that context, they associated it with the traditional Chinese meaning of "Luck".

• [1] Chiijiiwa, Professor Hideaki, Encyclopedia on Color Cognition of the World's Youth. Japan: Kawade Shoboh Shinsha. 1999.
• [2] Röse, K. (2005): Intercultural Human-Machine Systems: Empirical Study of User Requirements in Mainland China. In: Usability and Internationalization of Information Technology, Ed. Aykin, N: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, London, 2005,

1.7.5. Propriety

Cultures differ widely in their concepts of propriety, especially with regards to decency and permissible behaviour. Differences can be very pronounced: in a culture such as the Tuareg it is unusual for a man to show his face to outsiders and deviating behaviour is considered offensive. Partial or even full nudity and / or display of skin can be acceptable in some cultural settings, but heavily ostracized in others.

1.7.5.1. Nudity / Dressing of persons in images

In the eGovernment setting, a particularly sensitive subset of propriety is the reaction to images of persons on web pages, in documents or in relation to software. An image that may be entirely innocuous in the scope of one cultural setting — e.g., men and women displaying their torsos on the web page of a German local authority alongside the swimming pool's opening hours — may be deeply offensive in other cultural settings, possibly even within the same country. On the other hand, using certain types of dress such as a head scarf may convey political and / or religious messages that are positively connotated in some cultures and negatively in others (potentially again within the boundaries of the same country).

1.7.5.2. Propriety in texts

Much of what has been said relating to propriety in images in eGovernment publications also is relevant to their textual contents. The textual motives are more varied, though, and do not at present lend themselves to the same level of formalization.

1.7.6. Formality

Cultures differ markedly in the level of formality they use in various forms of communications in certain contexts. This is mirrored in many situations — the preferred choice of clothing in certain contexts, the way of saluting or taking leave of somebody, the preference for certain meals over others, etc.. In many of these cases these preferences persist independently of the concrete way of expressing them.

1.7.6.1. Formality in addressing people

In this CWA we concentrate on one special case, the preference for formality used in written communication, in particular in letters and emails, when addressing a person. For expediency we postulate the existence of three different name forms for addressing a person:

• formal form of address (e.g. “The Right Honorable XY” or “Herr Prof. Dr. Z”)

• neutral form of address (e.g. “Mr. XY” or “Herr Z”)

• informal form of address (e.g. “John” or “Hans”)

The concrete format of the name, possibly involving the person's honorifics and styles, as well as name ordering differs widely from culture to culture, as is discussed in more detail above.

We pitch these three forms of address against three contexts and list the preference for using one of them in that context:

• familiar: the addressee is related or close friends;

• normal: contact with the addressee is in a “normal” business scenario;

• formal: contact with the addressee is in formal setting and / or the addressee is much more senior in age or rank.

  NOTE: If the addressee is a child, the context is normally familiar by default.

The choice of name form in those contexts differs markedly across cultures. In the US, for example, it is quite common to send business letters to virtual strangers on a first name basis, i.e. using an informal version of their name. Doing the same in many other countries would be considered extremely offensive.

• NOTE: The three-partite taxonomy of names and contexts is based on European requirements. For other cultural environments it may be too coarse grained.

1.7.6.2. T-V distinction

Related, but not identical to the choice of the correct form of a name in a given context is the choice of second-person personal pronoun in interacting with somebody else. While some languages such as English have only one second-person personal pronoun (at least, in their present state), namely “you”, many other cultures / languages have two or, indeed, several pronouns that a speaker chooses depending on his relationship to the addressee. This situation is called the T-V distinction, after the Latin pronouns tu and vos. It is well known, e.g., in French (”tu” vs. “vous”), German (”du” vs. “Sie”) and Italian (”tu” vs. “lei”), but in fact, most European languages use a variation of the t-v distinction, though its use has eroded over the last decades in all but the most formal settings in some countries such as Norway and Sweden. Several non-European cultures such as Japan have a much more elaborate system of t-v distinction with many more gradations of formality.

In cultures that have the t-v distinction, the correct choice of pronoun is a matter of basic politeness in both oral and written communication. Not using the correct pronoun can be anything between inconsiderate and extremely rude. It is often, but by no means always coupled to the chosen version of a name.

We apply the same three-partite taxonomy of contexts, but link to a list of second-person personal pronouns, ordered by increasing formality. For our sample table, this CWA concentrates on systems with two second-person personal pronouns (the most frequent case in Europe), but the mechanism scales to more elaborate systems.

[1] Brown, R. and A. Gilman (1960) “The Pronouns of Power and Solidarity” in American Anthropologist 4 (6): 24-39

1.7.6.3. Role of hierarchies

Along similar lines, the role of the individual in its institutional hierarchy differs markedly across cultures [1]. The focus can be on the role of the individual in the fabric of governmental organizations or on the organizations themselves. Again, such changes can reflect on the correct format of addressing somebody and permeate many aspects of the communication.

[1] Hall, E.T. (1989) Beyond Culture. Anchor Books, New York 1989

1.7.7. Role of Privacy vs Transparency

Privacy and transparency are both valued positively in most cultures in government contexts, while often being antithetical to one another. Transparency is considered essential, amongst others, to fight corruption and to ensure the fairness of governmental and political decision taking processes. Privacy, on the other hand, is valued to protect the individual sphere of citizens, politicians and government employees alike. The relative weighting of these values differs markedly between cultures.

In the context of this CWA we concentrate on the effect of the weighting on the access to government resources. In some countries, notably Sweden, the great majority of government documents including tax declarations and job applications to government posts are disclosed to the public. In others government documents are considered private by default, and the release of a citizen's tax declaration to the public would be a serious breach of relevant privacy laws.

Arbitrarily, the following table used “+” to mark a preference for privacy over transparency and “-” for the inverse situation.

[1] Posner, R. A. (1981). “The economics of privacy”. The American Economic Review, 71(2), 405-409

1.8. Development of a formal structure

1.8.1. Introduction

The class of soft cultural elements is a subclass of the general resource class defined in the reference ontology (part 1a). It can be expressed in a number of different representation including Topic Maps (XTM), OWL or a special extension to the CLDR's Local Data Markup Language (LDML). Alongside the class of soft cultural elements proper we have a class of factual elements that complement current CLDR data and a class of document templates. All of these are also subclasses of the general resource class.

The following exposition of the classes relevant for expressing cultural elements extend the reference ontology. Only new classes, properties and associations are listed.

• NOTE: As in the general eGovernment reference ontology, the prefix http://psi.egovpt.org/types/ is omitted from all identifiers to facilitate rendition. It must be prefixed to all unqualified IDs.

1.8.2. Soft Cultural Element

Soft Cultural Element is the abstract base class for the soft cultural elements proper and a direct child of the general resource class.

Relationship (in addition to the inherited ones):

1.8.3. Privacy

Preferences for certain privacy options such as strict privacy requirements vs. transparency

1.8.4. Formality

Preferences for a formal behaviour in certain circumstances

Property (in addition to the inherited ones):

1.8.5. Colour code

Preferences for certain colours or colour schemes in given circumstances

Property (in addition to the inherited ones):

1.8.6. Propriety

Acceptability of certain behaviour in given circumstances, notably relating to standards of decency

Property (in addition to the inherited ones):

1.8.7. Factual Element

A class of elements that describe assertions on culturally determined facts, e.g. use of typographic conventions or rules for greeting people. In type, these elements are related to “traditional” CLDR data. In addition to the explicitly enumerated subclasses other existing CLDR locale data can be seen as subclasses of this type.

Properties (in addition to the inherited ones):

Relationship (in addition to the inherited ones):

1.8.8. Typographic Convention

Typographic conventions that are being used in a given cultural setting

1.8.9. Name ordering

Rules for the ordering of the components of a personal name (e.g. sequences of given name / family name or vice versa)

1.8.10. Personal Name Structure

Structures for the handling of personal names

1.8.11. Document Template

Instances of the class document template refer to machine-readable and machine-processable document templates that correspond to a set of typographic preferences (e.g. preferred fonts, margins etc.).

Properties (in addition to the inherited ones):

1.8.12. Value Judgement

A value judgement on given behaviours or facts in the scope of a specific cultural setting. The value judgement can be context-dependent.

Relationship:

1.8.13. Cultural Setting

An instance of the cultural setting class represents a given cultural environment (e.g. the British culture or the culture of the Muslim community in France). Other cultural elements are related to this.

Relationship:

1.8.14. Language

1.8.15. Context

1.8.16. Simplified Overview of the Ontology