[Ubuntu-l10n-eng] Phase Two (was "Re: [Bug 66158] Edgy Eft Beta - About Me dialog in Preferences")

[David Lodge]

On Mon, 30 Oct 2006 20:11:15 -0000, Toby Smithe <toby.smithe at gmail.com>  
wrote:
> On Mon, 2006-10-30 at 22:22 +1000, Sridhar Dhanapalan wrote:
>> This is only a temporary position, however. Unfortunately, Rosetta is  
>> closed
>> source at present. We should be lobbying the Rosetta developers so that  
>> they
>> realise the importance of our project, and hence implement Similar  
>> Languages
>> support. Perhaps we can get Rosetta to be finally opened so that we can  
>> work
>> on it ourselves? :)
> I'm for it.

I agree - having translated a lot of en to en_GB stuff I see lots of stuff  
that is slightly out of sync for whichever flavour of English is being  
used, especially as some Englishes are very similar to others (en_CA is a  
cross 'twixt en_US and en_GB; en_AU is en_GB with some modifications).

This may also make translation to some of the other dialects of English  
(e.g. Scots, Yorkshire, Basic, some of the Creoles) a bit easier.

>> Once implemented, the floodgates are open. This brings us to Phase Two.  
>> Our
>> newfound capabilities in Rosetta will finally enable us to create
>> translations based on en_GB (en_AU, en_ZA, en_CA, ...). Getting back to
>> Malcolm's comment, this will allow the en_GB translation to
>> de-internationalise itself and become more specifically British.
>> Region-specific language will be moved to the sub-translations.
> Perhaps creating a generic "en" translation from the then old "en_GB",
> and having en_GB become localised. This would allow derivatives
> (including en_GB) to all pull from one generic source, and to go back to
> it in future. Or is this overkill?

That goes all the way back to the big question of what is 'standard'  
English - currently it's en_US, simply due to the amount of Americans  
coding for Linux and setting the policies, but 5, 10, years down the line?  
(Gnome did, at one point, create a special en_US i18n category, but this  
faded away.)

I'd still argue that the 'standard' English is en_GB (after all English is  
the language of the English people), but I'm in a minority :-)

Back to the point in hand. I'm happy to less regionalise the upstream  
translation and follow the KDE lead, as, thinking about it, non-UK people  
use the en_GB locale (e.g. Ireland, Isle of Man, Channel Islands, some of  
the other commonwealth countries and dependant states etc.) as I need to  
check out the file to correct the inconsistent translation anyway.

Should I use "Region" instead of "County" for the Gnome translation?

dave