Subject: Field name nitpick
From: Tim Allen (rita_tim@tpg.com.au)
Date: Wed Feb 21 2001 - 04:49:30 CST
Why "military time" to describe a 24-hour time? Is that what church
secretaries call it? Didn't think church secretaries were into military
anything :-). Certainly, the name didn't tell me anything, I had no idea
what it was until I tried it. My suggestion is that something like "24-hour
time" would be more obviously meaningful. Adjust for your own cultural,
environmental and linguistic biases.
BTW, don't military types tend to express times as "0400 hours" and the
like? That would be more like a "military time" to me.
It was fun trying to translate it into Indonesian, since in Indonesia they
don't have AM or PM, and writing times using a 24hr clock is normal. I was
going to translate it as "jam prajurit Amrik" (American soldier time)
before realising that it was actually just the normal way of writing the
time, and no need to confuse matters by bringing the military into it
at all.
Could I suggest that anytime we have a lot of text added, we automatically
delay any release for at least a week or so, both to give the translators
time to catch up and also to allow sensible discussion about whether the
English text could be improved? This last release seemed a bit rushed to
me, with a lot of quite significant changes being made only a day or two
before release. Not that I want to dampen anyone's enthusiasm to rush
headlong ahead adding more features, just that when it comes to release
time I think a "slow and steady wins the race" attitude is helpful.
Tim
-- ----------------------------------------------------------- Tim Allen http://www4.tpg.com.au/users/rita_tim/ tim@proximity.com.au rita_tim@tpg.com.au
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