[gnome-love] Re: GNOME Lovers Needed: l10n work for locations database

[David Lodge <dave cirt net>]

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