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

[Dan Scott]

2009/3/5 Shawn Boyette <sboyette at esilibrary.com>:
> Mike Rylander wrote:
>
>> 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 think in a public terminal setting, the right thing to do is to display
> language names as natively as possible -- it is impossible to know what
> languages the next person to come along will speak.

Yes, this is the optimal approach. The W3C Internationalization
Activity group uses this approach (see the "Translations" dropdown at
http://www.w3.org/International/) and so does the ultimate arbiter of
all Web design decisions, the Google (try http://www.google.cz/).

See in particular the "Translate Options" section of
http://www.w3.org/International/questions/qa-navigation-select

> And, playing devil's advocate, what if you, monolingual English speaker, sat
> down where someone had just been using the Japanese interface? How would you
> know to pick 英語? :)

Exactly.

-- 
Dan Scott
Laurentian University