Re: GNOME Lovers Needed: l10n work for locations database

[Adam Weinberger <adamw gnome org>]

David Lodge wrote:
> Quoting Danilo Å egan <danilo gnome org>:
>
> > > I don't think we have a policy of using American English in the msgid.
> > > We discussed this before, and I proposed to have a more thorough
> > > discussion at the Guadec meeting in Krisiansand, but there was no
> > > meeting on this in Kristiansand. Maybe next time. My suggestion is that
> > > we continue to use English English, as it is more used around the world.
> > > and needs less modifications when going from one version of English to
> > > another.
> >
> > So, it is recommended for at least documentation.
> >
> > OTOH, we already have all the code in U.S. English, and we have en_GB
> > team (and no en_US team).
> >
> > Switching now to British English is going to cause many problems for
> > other translators as well.
>
>
> I fully agree with Danilo - even though I don't like American English (being
> British ;-) - I realise that the majority of GNOME developers and users either
> speak or have been taught American English. With my own correspondance with
> NNES I have noted that, for Europe at least, American spelling and grammar is
> taught in preference to British and with the homogenity of American documents
> this is probably the safer option.
>
> As the en_GB teams does exist (though it seems to just be me at the moment!) I
> see nothing wrong with stating that all strings should be follow American
> grammar and spelling.
>
> I have actually raised bugs where spellings have been mixed (mainly on
> gnumeric).
>
> dave

FWIW, as the maintainer of the Canadian English (en_CA) translations, I 
agree. People expect that if they don't request anything specific, 
they'll get American English spellings. This is a nearly universal truth 
across software projects, it seems, and more to do with convention than 
with a recognition of what the majority of the world sees as native 
spelling and grammar. Switching to en_GB as the default would make us 
the odd project out, and would serve to confuse more people than it 
would benefit.

# Adam


--
Adam Weinberger
adamw magnesium net || adamw FreeBSD org
adamw vectors cx    ||   adamw gnome org
http://www.vectors.cx