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zone.tab</title></head><body>
<div>I've been on the tz list for several years. I have tried to
follow the Time Zone Localizations topic for CLDR.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>I do not understand why translations would be supplied for
timezone IDs (tzIDs). Many tzIDs refer to the same time zone name. For
example, I believe that Argentina has 2 time zone names, yet it has 10
tzIDs to handle DST rules for various states. Does this mean that 20
localized names would be required for Argentina? Does this mean that a
new tzID would not be localized?</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>Looking at 381 tzIDs of a tzData version (from 2006), I multiply
it by two (for std and dst names) to obtain 762 time zone names
required. By removing names of tzIDs that do not recognize DST and
removing tzIDs that refer to the same time name (e.g. many tzIDs refer
to Central European Time), I was to reduce total time zone names from
762 to 212.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>Can over 500 names can be removed from the translation list?
Multiplying 500 potentially unneeded names by the number of
translations would result in a large reduction of translation
efforts.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>My approach is dependent on having a stable list of time zone
names. As far as I know, such a list does not exist. If such a list
existed, I would envision tzIDs being mapped to the 'time zone name'
list.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>Chuck</div>
<div><br></div>
<div><br></div>
<div>At 10:44 AM -0700 7/10/07, Mark Davis wrote:</div>
<blockquote type="cite" cite>The Unicode CLDR project (<a
href="http://unicode.org/cldr/">http://unicode.org/cldr/</a>) does
supply translations for timezone IDs. There are a few caveats.<br>
<blockquote>1.<x-tab> </x-tab>The
timezone database really has equivalence classes of IDs. One of these
can be used as a representative for any in the equivalence class. It
is the zone.tab file that contains such IDs. CLDR started by using
that file, but unfortunately it is not stable (different equivalent
IDs can be substituted at any time). So what we do is use as the
representative the one that historically the first one used in any
zone.tab file (after CLDR started).</blockquote>
<blockquote>2.<x-tab> </x-tab>We allow,
but do not encourage, translation of zones that are the only zone in a
country. For that we use the country name. This cuts down very
substantially on the number of translations needed. That is, you would
see the equivalent of "Italy", and "United States (Los
Angeles)" -- only in the latter case do we need translations for
the cities.</blockquote>
<blockquote>3.<x-tab>
</x-tab>Translators can optionally add other variations: daylight
(summer) time, standard (winter) time, and generic time, both
abbreviated and long.</blockquote>
<blockquote>4.<x-tab> </x-tab>These
choices percolate out to clients of CLDR: Google, IBM, Apple, Adobe,
and many others.<br>
</blockquote>
</blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite>Mark<br>
</blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite>On 7/10/07,<b> Olson, Arthur David
(NIH/NCI) [E]</b> <<a
href="mailto:olsona@dc37a.nci.nih.gov">olsona@dc37a.nci.nih.gov</a>>
wrote:<br>
<blockquote>I'm forwarding this message from Vincent Untz, who is not
on the time zone mailing list.<br>
<br>
Those of you who are on the time zone mailing list should direct
replies appropriately.<br>
<br>
<span
></span
> <span
></span
> --ado<br>
<br>
-----Original Message-----<br>
From: Vincent Untz [mailto:<a href="mailto:vuntz@gnome.org">
vuntz@gnome.org</a>]<br>
Sent: Tuesday, July 10, 2007 1:24 PM<br>
To: <a
href="mailto:tz@lecserver.nci.nih.gov">tz@lecserver.nci.nih.gov</a><br
>
Subject: Localization of timezones from zone.tab<br>
<br>
Hi,<br>
<br>
[please keep me cc'ed since I'm not subscribed to this list]<br>
<br>
I know that, at least in GNOME, there are now three places where
we<br>
parse zone.tab to get a list of timezones supported by the OS. I
suppose<br>
other projects are also doing this. This list is then presented to
the<br>
user to let him choose the timezone.<br>
<br>
The problem here is that we let the user choose strings which look
like<br>
"Antarctica/South_Pole". This is not really good for<br>
non-english-speaking people ;-)<br>
<br>
Of course, we can add all the timezones to our list of strings to<br>
translate, but this means all projects needing to do so will
duplicate<br>
this work and the translations.<br>
<br>
I'd like the tz database to ship translations in po files. This
would<br>
imply the following:<br>
<br>
+ create a small script to generate a POT file from zone.tab
(easy)<br>
+ submit the POT file to the translation project [1] (or any
other</blockquote>
<blockquote> place that helps with
translation)</blockquote>
<blockquote>+ add the po files for translation to the tz database<br>
+ choose a gettext domain<br>
<br>
(Of course, I'm quite probably forgetting about a step :-))<br>
<br>
I've seen that this topic has been discussed before [2], but the<br>
proposition there was really more ambitious, so I'm hoping a
simple<br>
approach would be welcomed.<br>
<br>
What do you think?<br>
<br>
Thanks,<br>
<br>
[1] <a
href="http://translationproject.org/">http://translationproject.org/</a
><br>
[2] <a href="http://osdir.com/ml/time.tz/2004-09/msg00000.html">
http://osdir.com/ml/time.tz/2004-09/msg00000.html</a><br>
<br>
Vincent<br>
<br>
--<br>
Les gens heureux ne sont pas pressés.<br>
</blockquote>
</blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><br>
<br>
<br>
--<br>
Mark</blockquote>
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