Blog author here. Surprised to see one of my old posts on the front page while browsing Hacker News.
It's interesting to reflect on what has improved since I wrote it, and what has not.
Both Android and iOS, for instance, provide mechanisms to get this right, if you know to use them and expose them for those locales (and only those locales). For example, both have a Contact object that contain corresponding phonetic-reading fields for first and last names.
iOS Contact - see phoneticGivenName, phoneticFamilyName
https://developer.apple.com/documentation/contacts/cncontact
Android contact - see PHONETIC_GIVEN_NAME, PHONETIC_FAMILY_NAME
https://developer.android.com/reference/android/provider/Con...
For fun I tried using Google Translate to translate the kanji name in the post 淳子 in various contexts to see what Google thinks it is:
- 淳子 translated to "Dumpling"
- 淳子さん translated to "Atsuko"
- 淳子様 translated to "Sadako"
- 淳子さま translated to "Mrs. Lion"
- 淳子殿 translated to "Mr. Reiko"
- 私の名前は淳子です translated to "My name is Miko"
- 私の名前は淳子です。 translated to "My name is Reiko."
- 私の名前は淳子です！ translated to "My name is gyoza!"
I expected them all to translate to Junko or Atsuko. The variation and unexpected results for what should be exactly the same thing is very interesting.
It's interesting to reflect on what has improved since I wrote it, and what has not.
Both Android and iOS, for instance, provide mechanisms to get this right, if you know to use them and expose them for those locales (and only those locales). For example, both have a Contact object that contain corresponding phonetic-reading fields for first and last names.
iOS Contact - see phoneticGivenName, phoneticFamilyName https://developer.apple.com/documentation/contacts/cncontact
Android contact - see PHONETIC_GIVEN_NAME, PHONETIC_FAMILY_NAME https://developer.android.com/reference/android/provider/Con...
For fun I tried using Google Translate to translate the kanji name in the post 淳子 in various contexts to see what Google thinks it is:
- 淳子 translated to "Dumpling"
- 淳子さん translated to "Atsuko"
- 淳子様 translated to "Sadako"
- 淳子さま translated to "Mrs. Lion"
- 淳子殿 translated to "Mr. Reiko"
- 私の名前は淳子です translated to "My name is Miko"
- 私の名前は淳子です。 translated to "My name is Reiko."
- 私の名前は淳子です！ translated to "My name is gyoza!"
I expected them all to translate to Junko or Atsuko. The variation and unexpected results for what should be exactly the same thing is very interesting.