[NCUC-DISCUSS] NCUC French translation project [was Chinese Translation Project]

[Tapani Tarvainen]

On Mar 18 07:52, Timothe Litt (litt at acm.org) wrote:

> The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers is a non-profit
> organization.
> 
> If one removes the article, it makes no sense.

Of course it does. It would be awkward and arguably nongrammatical
or even abuse of English, but certainly understandable and probably
would not cause anyone more than a slight pause while reading it.

> So the issue is whether ICANN is a well-known enough acronym to be
> considered a noun, rather than something that people need to expand
> in-place to understand.
>
> In an introductory document, on behalf of the audience, I say no.  In
> any language.

In _any_ language? Finnish does not have articles at all,
and this distinction does not exist as a grammatical construct:
it is only semantics, inferred from context.

As for English or French, I claim no expertise, but really don't
think it matters much. People will understand it either way.

> And that's the larger challenge for writing any document: know your
> audience.

That is certainly true.

-- 
Tapani Tarvainen