Re: Use of American/British English

[Christian Rose <menthos gnome org>]

mån 2004-02-23 klockan 01.15 skrev Adam Weinberger:
> > The point I was trying to make was that it didn't really matter if
> > translations were in a different flavour of English as long as the whole
> > program uses that same flavour.

Not entirely true -- if the program is part of the GNOME Desktop and
Developer Platform, it better use the same flavour of English as the
rest of the desktop, as we want to be able to reuse translations across
the entire desktop.


> *nod* So then, should I file bug reports against apps that use both
> "color" and "behaviour" by default?

Definately. Also file bug reports if the program uses "colour" etc. in
its original strings, i.e. non-US spellings. If the application is not
part of the official GNOME release, that may still be acceptable,
however. But certainly not if it is.


Every application in the desktop using its own English flavour is not
the recipe for a consistent desktop experience.
Also, as people have pointed out, translators want to be able to use
translation memories across the whole desktop. TM:s only become really
effective once they have reached a certain size; a critical mass. Every
application using different terminology and different spellings is a
sure way of destroying that goal.

GNOME uses en_US spellings in its original (C locale) user-visible
strings, for better or for worse. But alternate spellings and languages
can be, and are, provided by translations. Please accept that.


Christian