Re: New team for Sinhala (si)

[harshula <hash jayasolutions cjb net>]

Hi Christopher,

That's perfectly reasonable. We'll keep the gnome-i18n group up to date
on the status of the amendment. We'd appreciate it if the gnome-i18n
group could keep us informed of any potentially permanent or difficult
to alter situations with the translations. Thanks.

Regards,
Harshula


On Mon, 2004-10-18 at 08:17, Christopher Fynn wrote:
> 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