Language of the parts for phonetic translations

[alastc]

From an internationalization point of view, does anything need to be done for bits of text which indicate how to pronounce something in another language?

A live example of this is the caption for the second figure on this page about old Chinese writing..

The second figure's caption has:

1. An intro in the page-default language (English).
2. A bit in English letters showing the phonetic pronunciation in Chinese.
3. A bit of chinese text

This question is about number 2, English letters indicating pronunciation in Chinese (as best you can without tonal information). Note this is different from Ruby which shows a sort-of translation into another variant of the same language.

My assumption is that it should not have a lang attribute, but does anyone disagree?

Either way, it might be a good example for the understanding doc.

[JediLin]

In this case, the "English letters showing the phonetic pronunciation in Chinese" of that figure are in fact Mandarin Phonetic Symbols II, which are still Chinese (Mandarin). Just like the Romanization of Japanese in the first figure's caption are still Japanese.

I prefer to use lang attribute in these cases, so they can be pronounced correctly.

Note: Taiwan's Ministry of Education still list MPS2 here:

taken from (Big5 encoding) webpage https://language.moe.gov.tw/001/Upload/files/site_content/M0001/er/p2.htm?open

[patrickhlauke]

I prefer to use lang attribute in these cases, so they can be pronounced correctly.

which values, specifically? those of the language they transliterate?

[JediLin]

I prefer to use lang attribute in these cases, so they can be pronounced correctly.

which values, specifically? those of the language they transliterate?

In this case, I'll use <span lang="ja">Hyakumantō darani</span> and <span lang="zh">Yi qie ru lai xin mi mi quan shen she lie bao qie yin tuo luo ni jing: can juan</span>, for they are not English (language) but Romanization (writing system).

[patrickhlauke]

adding as a "to do" for WCAG 2.x TF, as this would be good to add to understanding, as noted by @alastc