[OPEN-ILS-DEV] Translation of Language Names et al.

[Mike Rylander]

On Thu, Mar 5, 2009 at 9:15 AM, Betty Ing <ingbe at mcmaster.ca> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I am working on the English-to-German translation and am having some
> difficulty finding correct translations of the many different languages
> in the db.seed.po file. I looked briefly in the cs_CZ version of this
> file and saw that some language names in the Translation column were
> identical to those in the Original String column. How have others
> handled this situation?
>
> In some translation best practices, I have seen a suggestion that the
> language name be translated only into the language of the language
> name. For example, "German" would not appear on the English OPAC for
> language selection, rather "Deutsch" would appear on the English OPAC.
> Since switching from English to German would most likely be for users
> who have a command of both English and German, this solution seems
> reasonable.

Obviously, both methods are supported, and (perhaps less obviously)
can even be different for different translations and installations,
via local database-level setup.

If the target locale's native name is used in the Original String
version, then (for instance) the English locale can supply the English
language name, or not -- whichever is chosen by the tranlsators as the
best default.  That's probably the most flexible way to handle it, so
that the customs of the user's primary locale can be used.  By way of
example using Simplified Chinese (zh_CN), English can use the original
string for German (Deutsch) by not supplying a translation (what I
call the "wikipedia" way), and Simplified Chinese can provide a
translation, if that is the best way to handle it for primarily zh_CN
users.

As for what is best, I don't have a strong opinion because I am quite
unilingual, but I will say that I would personally prefer to see the
English name of languages displayed when I'm in the English interface.
 Though my reasoning for that is selfish -- I just want to know what's
available, for curiosity and testing.

>
> I am assuming that only language pairs that have sufficient material
> translated will be posted, in which case language names without any
> translated documentation would not need their language name translated
> into any other language for posting purposes. Is this correct? Where
> can I access info on how the original strings are extracted and
> translations inserted? Is it dojo?
>

Dan can explain this better than I, by far.

-- 
Mike Rylander
 | VP, Research and Design
 | Equinox Software, Inc. / The Evergreen Experts
 | phone:  1-877-OPEN-ILS (673-6457)
 | email:  miker at esilibrary.com
 | web:  http://www.esilibrary.com