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

[Alan Horkan <horkana maths tcd ie>]

On Mon, 13 Dec 2004, Adam Weinberger wrote:

> David Lodge wrote:
> > 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
>
> FWIW, as the maintainer of the Canadian English (en_CA) translations, I
> agree. People expect that if they don't request anything specific,
> they'll get American English spellings. This is a nearly universal truth
> across software projects, it seems, and more to do with convention than
> with a recognition of what the majority of the world sees as native
> spelling and grammar. Switching to en_GB as the default would make us
> the odd project out, and would serve to confuse more people than it
> would benefit.

I always accepted the C locale as being equal to en_US, but I failed and
still fail to understand why if en_IE or en_AU is unavailable I do not
fall back to "en" and for "en" to be equal to en_GB which is still
considered to be standard English is it not?

The worst part is when translators choose to use words like
Favourites/Favorites rather than simpler more sensible words like
Bookmarks which do not require localisation.  (I started a translation
once because I was sick of seeing an almost useless error message which
read "bogus document".  Anytime I hear "bogus" or "awesome" I cannot help
thinking it should be followed by "dude!")

Ideally translators should use standard grammar common to both if at
all possible.

/end-mini-rant

- Alan H.