Subject: Re: how should we localize locale names?
From: Tomas Frydrych (tomas@frydrych.uklinux.net)
Date: Tue Mar 13 2001 - 13:14:18 CST
>Paul:
> At the risk of disrupting an emerging consensus, I'm afraid I don't see how
> the distinction above helps. Why would the fact that I want to use a
> language for one purpose (pulling down menus) versus another (typing content
> in it) matter? Wouldn't I want the names of those languages to be the same
> in both cases?
I think what we envisaged in the former case is a dialogue that
would allow the user to for instance select langauge for the
interface at startup. In such a situation we would not be able to
assume that the user understands any other language than the one
she is looking for, i.e., we would have to present a list of languages
formed along the lines you suggested.
> Tomas -- It's very, very clear that you *hate* this proposal, but I'm trying
> to figure out which of the following is the killer issue for you. Before I
> agree with you, I want to know what I'm agreeing with and why. :-)
The killer issue for me is theory D which is slightly modified theory
C:
> Theory C
> --------
> Even if we *could* render all those language names properly in the UI, it'd
> still be a bad idea. Speakers of each of the 170 languages in the world
> just plain *want* that entire list of 170 languages to be rendered in their
> language. Period.
>
> I admit that it kind of tickled my fancy to ship a product that helped me
> learn what folks from Wales think their language should be called, rather
> than what some ancestor of mine called them. ;-) But hey, I got my degree
> in liberal arts, where they train you that being ethnocentric is a Bad
> Thing.
I think that (a) people expect the menus to be in their UI language
only; (b) my basic problem is that in many cases we *will not* be
able to show the language in the way the people who speak it call
it, for lack of the necessary glyphs, and so we will end up with
something ugly half-way in between; this is the one thing I trully
hate.
Tomas
P.S. I do not think you are stupid at all :-)
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