Re: New team for Sinhala (si)

[harshula <hash jayasolutions cjb net>]

On Wed, 2004-10-13 at 06:53, Christian Rose wrote:
> tis 2004-10-12 klockan 14.17 skrev harshula:
> > > > Lanka Linux User Group is spearheading a project to translate various
> > > > Free Software projects to Sinhala Language.  We have made good progress
> > > > on the GTK/GNOME front.  We like to officially get involved with GTP.
> [...]
> > > Just as a note: The ISO 3166 calls this language "Sinhalese" in English
> > > (http://www.loc.gov/standards/iso639-2/englangn.html#st), so that is the
> > > spelling that I'll use throughout.
> > 
> > Hi Christian,
> > 
> > We have already noted the error in ISO 3166 and it should be corrected
> > by the Sri Lankan Standards body soon. Once the ISO 3166 standard has
> > been corrected, will it be trivial to revert all the usages of
> > "Sinhalese" to to the correct word - "Sinhala"?
> 
> It's certainly doable. A little help with reminding me/us of doing it in
> all places wouldn't hurt, when/if the ISO 3166 standards body changes
> its recommendation.
> 
> These are the places the language names are used in GNOME, off the top
> of my head:
> 
> * The si po files. I assume you'll write the English language name the
> way you prefer it in there.
> * http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gtp/teams.html
> * http://www.gnome.org/i18n/ (there are no si translations in any
> released stable GNOME version, so it's not listed there yet)
> * http://bugzilla.gnome.org/describecomponents.cgi?product=l10n
> * http://l10n-status.gnome.org/ (there are no si translations in GNOME
> CVS yet, so it's not listed on the status pages yet)
> * GDM, the GNOME login screen software (there are no si translations in
> GNOME CVS yet, so there's no point in requesting a language entry for si
> in GDM yet)
> * Possibly other software having a list of languages

Hi Christian,

I just noted that we have been incorrectly referring to ISO 3166, we
should be referring to ISO 639! ISO 3166 contains the country codes.

Having looked at your list, that's not really trivial is it? Perhaps we
can minimise the excess work by me explaining why the current ISO 639
entry is incorrect?

1) ISO 15924: http://www.unicode.org/iso15924/iso15924-codes.html

"Sinh 348 Sinhala singhalais Sinhala 2004-05-01"

This is a more recent standard, representing the script, which contains
the correct term for the Sinhala language. Compare this to the older ISO
639:

ISO 639: http://www.loc.gov/standards/iso639-2/englangn.html

"Sinhalese singhalais sin si"

You will note that the French term, "singhalais" is identical in both
standards.


2) Sri Lanka's Constitution:
http://www.constitution.gov.lk/presnt_const.htm

http://www.constitution.gov.lk/Conpdf/78chap04.pdf:

"Official languages 

32. The official languages of the Republic shall be Sinhala and Tamil. 

National languages 

33. The national languages of the Republic shall be Sinhala, Tamil and
English."


3) The SLSI (Sri Lanka Standards Institution):
http://www.nsf.ac.lk/slsi/ and ICTA (Information and Communication
Technology Agency of Sri Lanka): http://www.icta.lk and both in
agreement that the entry in ISO 639 is incorrect and are in the process
of getting it amended to "Sinhala".

Hopefully, this maybe sufficient to avert the additional work by using
"Sinhalese" now and then having to change it to "Sinhala".

What's you view?

Regards,
Harshula


> Christian
>