Re: [Phpgroupware-users] Simplified Chinese (zh) Translation

[Dave Hall]

C K Wu <address@hidden> wrote:

> Hello, folks,
> 
> I have just posted 9 translation patches at savannah.gnu.org .
> 
> The patches contain Simplified Chinese (zh) translation for the
> following nine modules:
> admin, calendar, email, forum, phpgwapi, preferences, projects, setup,
> todo.

Cool, I will assign them when https access to savannah is back up.

> 
> charset is defined to be gb18030, since afaik all software used in
> mainland China
> (the main region using Simplified Chinese) must support the gb18030
> charset.


Hmmmm ... ok then we have a problem.  From the research that gugux and I
did late last year and earlier this year, the zh language code is used
for all variants of chinese and each variant uses a different charset.  

I would suggest that we have a discussion on the translators list -
phpgroupware-docteam at gnu.org - on how best to handle the various
languages and charsets.  

We currently use RFC 1766/ISO 639-1 language codes
(ftp://ftp.nordu.net/rfc/rfc1766.txt), with the chaset being a phrase entry.

But there is ISO 639-2 (3 letter codes) (see
http://www.loc.gov/marc/languages/lang_pt2.html), or RFC 3066 ( see
http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3066.txt) which is ISO 639-1 (see
http://userpage.chemie.fu-berlin.de/diverse/doc/ISO_639.html) plus ISO
3166 country codes
(http://www.iso.ch/iso/en/prods-services/iso3166ma/02iso-3166-code-lists/list-en1.html)
such as en-US, de-DE or de-AT etc.  This could even provide a fallback
mode to en or de if the local version is not provided.

I personally think that we should use RFC 3066, but the country codes
should only be used where obsolutely required - such as pt-BR (Brazilian
Portugueses) but not for en-AU (Australian English) or en-UK (British
English) as the variation is minor.  While we are on this subject
English is English people in the US speak English - not English US or
American English!

I am not claiming to be an expert in linguistics or chinese politics,
but this is my practical suggestion for China, in the case of the
mainland i would suggest zh-CN, Taiwan would become zh-TW, Hong Kong
would use zh-HK, etc.  This would allow for the charset issues to be
overcome.

Please don't get me wrong, I support this effort, but how we provide the
best suppport possible for all users is my aim.

> 
> All credits should go to www.dottech.com.tw, which provides the
> original Traditional Chinese translation.  I only use an automatic
> conversion
> utility to convert the lang phrases from Traditional to Simplified
> Chinese.
> 

np, but have they been checked by a native speaker/reader?

> I don't intend to maintain the Simplified Chinese translation in 
> future.

Do you have anyone to nomiate for the task?

> My objective is to complete the Chinese language infrastructure within
> phpGroupWare as it stands currently, so when the next version of
> CK-Ledger is released, full Chinese language infrastructure is
> available.

Cool, I personally would like to see as many languages supported in
phpGW possible :)


> Therefore, feel free to take on the role of future Simplified Chinese
> translation
> maintainer.

Pass :)

Cheers

Dave

dave.hall.vcf
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