Re: [Tails-l10n] Activating Chinese (Taiwan) on our website

Delete this message

Reply to this message
Author: emma peel
Date:  
To: tails-l10n
Subject: Re: [Tails-l10n] Activating Chinese (Taiwan) on our website
MDrights:

> We sometimes mix these terms while formally I think I should use zh_TW,
> zh_HK and zh_CN (some sorts of Int'l standard?). However these formal
> terms are considered/critised by some people as this makes languages
> nationalised (and politisized).
> So as in the computer world (as well as on Weblate, Transifex) the
> 'zh_TW'-like term is widely used, we can continue using such terms.
>


Wanted to clarify: in the computer world, the *locales* in general have a push to be localized to a country.

But a locale is not only a language: is also a set composed, between other things, of:

- timezone
- way to write the date (for example, people on some countries write dates like 2020/30/01 and some other country writes 30/01/20 instead)
- language

So in the computer world there is a push to add the country to the locales, because it is needed to do the layouts and such.

But when we are translating content, we don't need to think about that.
That should be handled by the software, so for example we could use zh_hant for zh-TW and zh-HK and maybe the interface has to change the timezone or something like that, and the users need to decide if they use zh-hant for HK or for TW.

In the particular case of Tails, the timezone for example does not matter, because all users are running UTC.