Re: More translation stuff

[Alex Hudson <home alexhudson com>]

On Sat, 2006-11-04 at 12:56 +1000, Sridhar Dhanapalan wrote:
> On Tuesday 31 October 2006 18:06, "David Lodge" <dave cirt net> wrote:
> > Since then there has been some discussion on the Ubuntu list which makes
> > me wonder whether "County" is the best for all locales that use en_GB,
> > including the fact that KDE uses "Region".
> >
> > Would "Region" be a better translation?
> 
> This discussion originated on the ubuntu-l10n-eng list[1]. We recognise that 
> our project's aim is probably different from the goals of the GNOME en_GB 
> effort. The Ubuntu en_GB team is trying to make its translation accessible to 
> the majority of Commonwealth citizens as part of a two-stage process towards 
> having regional English translations dependent on a main en_GB trunk[2].

Taking "region" over "country" as a translation for "State/Province" is
a poorer translation for a UK-native, though.

In this country, "the regions" are something quite different - my region
is the south-east, for example - which are served by different
sub-national governmental organsations (for example, we have Regional
Development Agencies) and by a different national agency (the Department
for Transport, Local Government and the Regions).

Your region is never part of your address, though: County is still the
distinguishing area - generally, each region has a number of Counties.
So, putting "region" instead of "county" is incorrect for a number of
reasons.

Out of interest, why is Ubuntu attempting to make the en_GB translation
less relevant to GB? Is this simply a desire for non-American
International English plus limited manpower?

Cheers,

Alex.