Re: ISO 639-3

[Bruno Haible]

[Dropped CC to vlc-devel mailing list.]
John Cowan wrote:
> So 8 language identifiers still refer to the same entities
> as before, but those entities aren't considered languages, but rather
> dialects of the language they are merged into.  Their denotation has
> not changed.
> 
> Likewise, the 9 identifiers still refer to the same entities as before,
> but those identities aren't ocnsidered languages, but rather groups or
> collections of languages into which they were split.  Their denotation
> has not changed.

But still, isn't it an indication that they didn't understand the things
they were assigning identifiers for?

> A change in denotation would be surprising.  A change in scope to or
> from dialect, individual language, macrolanguage, and language collection
> should not be.

But even a change in scope is problematic for translations when you
already have distributed PO files.

Let's take an example: Alemannic German.

In ISO 639-2 [1], you have 1 entry for three dialects:
  gsw -- Swiss German; Alemannic; Alsatian

In ISO 639-3 [2], they have realized that two of these dialects are different
but they still collapse two of them:
  gsw -- Swiss German; Alemannic; Alsatian
  swg -- Swabian

But these are different dialects, really.
  Swiss German = Schwyzerdütsch     [3][6]
  Alsatian = Elsässisch             [4]
  Swabian = Schwäbisch              [5][7]
The Alsatian spoken close to and south of Strasbourg is IMO closer to Swabian
than to Swiss German. Also, there are multiple variants of Alsatian [8].

For these reasons, if someone was to produce a translation for Swiss German
or Alsatian  or Swabian, I would recommend them not to use 'gsw.po' - because
that would be ambiguous. But rather combine it with the country code to
make it less ambiguous:
  Swiss German - gsw_CH.po
  Alsatian     - gsw_FR.po
  Swabian      - swg_DE.po
With this choice, Alsatian users would not be annoyed with Swiss German or
Swabian translations, and vice versa.

You see, one cannot blindly rely on the ISO 639-2 and ISO 639-3 codes when
considering how to call translations in practice.

Bruno


[1] http://www.loc.gov/standards/iso639-2/php/code_list.php
[2] http://www.sil.org/ISO639-3/codes.asp
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_German
[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alsatian_language
[5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swabian_German
[6] http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=gsw
[7] http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=swg
[8] http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elsässisch