Re: New team for Sinhala (si)

[Christopher Fynn <cfynn gmx net>]

Harshula

An awful lot of other IT and internet standards reference ISO 639
as normative. That means whatever names are currently in ISO 639
are officially the names used in those standards as well - unless and 
until the name gets changed or amended in ISO 639 itself.

Although you the Sri Lanka Government &etc don't agree with what your
language is called in the current version of the ISO 639 standard,
and you have already submitted an official request to get it changed,
it is generally easier all the way round if you use the name that is
in the standard for now and switch as soon as the standard gets
changed. Snce ISO 639 codes and names are officially used referenced
in *many* other standards this affects everything that relies on those
standards as well.

International standards are of no use if people simply don't
follow them if they don't agree with them. You've done the
right thing by submitting an official request to get
"Sinhalese" changed to "Sinhala" - but, until that change
is ratified, it is probably best to follow what is there.
After all you will rightly expect everyone else to follow
the standard once it is changed.

Actually Sri Lanka is lucky in that your script has received the
correct name. There are cases of scripts encoded in ISO 10646
which users of the script object - to but since script and
character names cannot be changed in ISO 10646 - the users
are stuck with those names as long as that standard is used.

You are also lucky in that Sinhala is  an official language only
in Sri Lanka - In other cases where a language is official in more than 
one country (e.g. Bengali / Bangla in India and Bangladesh) and one 
party wants to change the name and the other doesn't, it is difficult to 
get a change made.

with all good wishes

- Chris



harshula wrote:

> So, the constitution of the country, ratified by the legislature, wasn't
> official nor relevant enough for you, but a document written by someone
> in the above two organisations would satisfy you?

> Please, explicitly state what will satisfy you, and I will endeavour to
> obtain it.

> We, with the support of SLSI and ICTA, have recently applied for the ISO
> 639 to be amended to use "Sinhala". We'll keep the gnome-i18n group
> updated on the status.

> We'd like to minimise unnecessary additional work. I'm sure those that
> would actually have to do the additional work would agree with me.

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

> > I guess we should go for Sinhalese now, and then switch to Sinhala if
> > the standard got changes. Arbitrary decisions of translation teams on
> > the English names of the languages has led to confusions. For example,
> > for a long time people thought that there is a "Farsi" translation team
> > for KDE, but not of GNOME. That would not have happened if the KDE
> > translation team had used the ISO name, "Persian".

> This is not applicable to our situation. Firstly, it's not an arbitrary
> decision by the translation team. It is supported by the the SLSI, ICTA
> and the Commissioner of Official Languages. Secondly, we are in the
> process of getting ISO 639 amended.

> > > What's you view?

> > I really believe we should stay with Sinhalese until someone announces a
> > change. I recommend you contact the Unicode mailing list at
> > <http://www.unicode.org/consortium/distlist.html#1> for some queries on
> > how it can be changed, and if it is necessary to do the change. I would
> > also appreciate me if you CC me in the discussions, so I may be able to
> > help.

> Actually, to amend the ISO 639 you need to use this form:

> http://www.loc.gov/standards/iso639-2/iso639-2chform.html

> Regards,
> Harshula

> > roozbeh