Re: Serbian (sr) language translation team: maintainer unresponsive

[Danilo Segan <dsegan gmx net>]

Keld Jørn Simonsen wrote:

>On Mon, Apr 07, 2003 at 08:54:51PM +0200, Pablo Saratxaga wrote:
>  
>
>>Kaixo!
>>
>>On Mon, Apr 07, 2003 at 05:18:46PM +0200, Christian Rose wrote:
>>
>>    
>>
>>>>So, the suggested resolution should be: "sr" for Serbian language (which
>>>>means also cyrillic alphabet), and "sh" for latin transcription.
>>>>        
>>>>
>>>Whatever suits you better. The important thing is not to use non-standard
>>>language codes. In a sense that might apply to "sh" as you wouldn't use it
>>>for its intended purpose as I understood it. But I admit I know very
>>>little about the details involved here with legacy from previous
>>>(broken) usage of codes.
>>>      
>>>
>>The problem is that ISO language codes don't care about writting.
>>So, there is a single code for Serbian, be it in latin or cyrillic,
>>and a single code for Chinese, be it traditional or simplified, etc.
>>For Chinese, zh_TW an zh_CN are used to distinguish the two;
>>but for Serbian there is a problem.
>>
>>Different codes are needed anyway, but using "sh" and "sr" would be better
>>than using "sr" and "sp"; as you never know if "sp" won't be attributed
>>in the future ("sh" won't), adn woudl be an improvement on the current
>>situation.
>>    
>>
>
>I learned in school that Kroatian and Serbian was the same language,
>but written in different scripts. Would that be a safe way out?
>hr as used in Serbia could be the language code for the Latin variant.
>(but maybe that would be a political problem)
>Is YU still used for Serbia or is there a iso 3166 code for Serbia?
>  
>
Not exactly. They were quite similar, and convereged to the somewhat 
same language (Serbo-Croatian"sh") during the time both were used in the 
same country. But, since the dissolve of former Yugoslavia, they're 
diverging again, and it's not rare for one word to be common in one, but 
non-existant in the other.

So, no, "hr" would not be an option. Also, you probably have a Croatian 
language team, and they ought to use that code.

On the other hand, it might be wiser to choose sr_lat, and sr (if one 
wants to keep "sr" as latin, though anyone's preference shouldn't impact 
the choice of the script), especially so because Serbian language comes 
in two "dialects" (ekavian, and yekavian). Each of these dialects could 
be written using any of cyrillic or latin, so we might have something like:
sr@yek - Serbian yekavian
sr_lat@yek - Serbian latin yekavian
sr - Serbian ekavian
sr_lat - Serbian latin ekavian

Cheers,
Danilo