gettext-0.10.37 discrepancies with Japanese, Nynorsk, Russian, etc.

[Paul Eggert]

> From: Iida Yosiaki <address@hidden>
> Date: Wed, 23 May 2001 07:22:12 -0400

> * In the Japanese team of the Free Translation Project, we
> already have had Japanese PO file for gettext in EUC-JP
> charset.

I noticed that gettext 0.10.37's po/ja.po differs from
<http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/contrib/po/maint/gettext/ja.po>,
which ought to be the latest Japanese translation for "gettext" and
which fixes the problems that you described in your bug report.

Surely all that's needed to fix the problem is for the gettext maintainer
to sync with <http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/contrib/po/maint/gettext/>.
As a maintainer, I long ago learned that I should just use the
umontreal files, without attempting to futz with them myself -- the
translator teams are much better than I am at their own languages,
and it's better to run translation patches through the teams than to
apply them myself.

There are other problems in other languages that would also be fixed
by syncing.  For example, gettext-0.10.37 is missing translations for
the following locales, even though translations are available at
umontreal:

  cs gl id it ru zh

Conversely, where umontreal has an "address@hidden" locale, gettext
0.10.37 has an "nn" locale.  Here it seems to me that gettext is
correct and umontreal (dated 1996-03-21 in this case) is obsolescent,
as "nn" is now the official ISO 639 language code for Nynorsk
Norwegian (as of 2000-02-18).  I'll CC: this message to address@hidden to
let them know about the discrepancy.

(Hmm, now that Nynorsk Norwegian has its own language code, perhaps
 there should be a separate translation mailing list <address@hidden> for
 it?  But this is surely an issue for the Norwegians.)

gettext also has "address@hidden" and an "address@hidden" locales, but I assume
it's OK for the maintainer to maintain extra translations by himself.
(I do that myself for en_GB in diffutils.)  However, I'll CC: this to
address@hidden just in case -- perhaps a standard procedure should be set
up for this sort of thing.

I'll also CC: this message to address@hidden, who is listed as
the last translator for gettext 0.10.37's po/ja.po file.  Perhaps he
can help explain the forked version.