Antique languages in epub

[carmenchu]

By the way:
1. I have bundled under <i xml:lang="und">...</i> all the roots/chunks of proto- and pre- languages in the book currently under perusal--any way, they are at best transliterations: if ever written, they should be in cuneiform or Sanskrit alphabets (?)...
2. Would that do for other transliterations as well?
For example, I remember meeting in a book 'bolit golova', which isn't certainly Russian, though it isn't en-US (like the context) either...

[Jellby]

Transliterations are often context-specific:
Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev (English)
Iwan Sergejewitsch Turgenew (German)
Ivan Sergueïevitch Tourgueniev (French)
Iván Serguéyevich Turguénev (Spanish)
Ivan Sergejevitj Turgenjev (Swedish)

[Doitsu]

Originally Posted by Jellby

Transliterations are often context-specific:

Not only that, there are also multiple transliteration systems for Russian, some of which a language-independent. For example, in scholarly papers you might find:

Ivan Sergeevič Turgenev

[Tex2002ans]

Originally Posted by carmenchu

1. I have bundled under <i xml:lang="und">...</i> all the roots/chunks of proto- and pre- languages in the book currently under perusal--any way, they are at best transliterations: if ever written, they should be in cuneiform or Sanskrit alphabets (?).

It's also a good idea to use lang along with xml:lang:

<i lang="und" xml:lang="und">

lang = HTML
xml:lang = XHTML

Using both allows tools that support either one to do their magic.

Another good idea is to give these things a class, for example, Greek:

<span class="greek" lang="grc" xml:lang="grc">

this allows you to easily add a specific embedded font for those characters if needed.

For more discussion on that, see the multiple threads discussing "Polytonic Greek" and the more recent 2020 "Should Chinese Fonts be Embedded in Ebooks?".

Originally Posted by carmenchu

2. Would that do for other transliterations as well?
For example, I remember meeting in a book 'bolit golova', which isn't certainly Russian, though it isn't en-US (like the context) either...

Things get a bit more complicated, there are these things called "Script subtags" or "Region subtags":

https://webaim.org/techniques/language/

like:

lang="zh-Latn"

is "Chinese written in Latin script"...

but ebooks don't really take subtags into account, and most tools don't either.

Yes, ultimately, we would want 100% correct lang markup throughout all our documents (down to the word-level)... but you may cause more harm and destroy ebook Accessibility even worse than just using basic lang markup (or none at all)!

Better to have an English book with the occasional "'English' Greek" than to have Greek marked up as a completely wrong language.