Corrections to timezone database

[Mark Davis]

I'll post this to the list, in case others are curious.

>From http://unicode.org/cldr/ you can find out about the membership and
participation. Anyone can file a bug against the database. See Filing Bug
Reports on that page.

‎Mark

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "walter harms" <wharms at bfs.de>
To: "Mark Davis" <mark.davis at jtcsv.com>
Sent: Friday, February 04, 2005 09:07
Subject: Re: Corrections to timezone database


> I mark,
> who collects remarks  about the translation ?
>
> I have some Problems since the 'official Name' and the common name differ:
> e.g.:
> belarus/weisrussland (even the pages:
>
http://www.auswaertiges-amt.de/www/de/laenderinfos/laender/laender_ausgabe_html?type_id=14&land_id=18
> mix these)
>
>
> Côte d’Ivoire: Elfenbeinküste
> Suriname: -> sometimes: Surinam
>
> re,
> walter
>
>
>
> Mark Davis wrote:
> > I do want to call people's attention to the CLDR project work on
timezone
> > identifiers (http://unicode.org/cldr/).
> >
> > We are in the process of gathering localization data for this coming
> > release. We have gathered some data for the locales {locale identifiers:
ar
> > cs da de en es fi fr hu it ja nb nl pl pt pt_PT ru sv tr zh zh_Hant},
and
> > are working on fleshing those out and adding more (we're not done yet!).
See
> > http://unicode.org/cldr/data/dropbox/timezones/.
> >
> > For example, the following shows the current translations using the data
we
> > have (for German):
> >
> > http://unicode.org/cldr/data/dropbox/timezones/de_current.html
> >
> > And the following shows a checklist for translators (note: in many cases
> > those don't *need* translation, since they are the same as the default
> > names.)
> >
> > http://unicode.org/cldr/data/dropbox/timezones/de_to_localize.xml
> >
> > =====
> >
> > The mechanism we use for the generic (wall time) tzid is:
> >
> > If a country has a single zone, we use the country name. Example (from
> > Chinese simplified):
> >
> > Europe/Brussels =>  比利时
> >
> > Otherwise we use the last field of the TZID, followed by the country
name in
> > parens. Example:
> >
> > Australia/Melbourne =>  墨尔本 (澳大利亚)
> >
> > We are going to be adding additional information where one zones in
> > *certain* multi-zone countries will just use the country name. Example,
we
> > have currently:
> >
> >  Asia/Shanghai => 上海 (中国)
> >  Asia/Kashgar => 喀什葛尔 (中国)
> >
> > Once we have that data, we'll generate:
> >
> >  Asia/Shanghai => 中国
> >  Asia/Kashgar => 喀什葛尔 (中国)
> >
> > (All of this can be overridden by specific localizations for generic,
> > standard, or daylight names. So if the equivalent of "Beijing Time" is
what
> > is customary in Chinese, we could use that.)
> >
> > ‎Mark
> >
> > ----- Original Message ----- 
> > From: "Paul Eggert" <eggert at CS.UCLA.EDU>
> > To: "Funda Wang" <fundawang at gmail.com>
> > Cc: "Tz (tz at elsie.nci.nih.gov)" <tz at lecserver.nci.nih.gov>
> > Sent: Friday, February 04, 2005 00:08
> > Subject: Re: Corrections to timezone database
> >
> >
> >
> >>Funda Wang <fundawang at gmail.com> writes:
> >>
> >>
> >>>In fact, we do not have an official abbreviation for "The Time of
> >>>Beijing", as we do not use English :)
> >>
> >>OK, in that case we should probably stick with "CST", as it
> >>abbreviates the most commonly used English phrase for the time in
> >>China.
> >>
> >>The tz database is an English database, by and large.  For example, it
> >>uses the abbreviation "CET" for Central European Time even though most
> >>residents of Central Europe use other abbrevations like "MEZ".  We
> >>don't currently have the resources to localize all the abbreviations,
> >>so we stick with English ones.  If and when the database is localized,
> >>we will transliterate "CST" in China to the appropriate Chinese
> >>characters (e.g., the characters for "The Time of Beijing").
> >>
> >>
> >>>the main reason that there should be a "Beijing" is that we call
> >>>UTC+8 as "The Time of Beijing".
> >>
> >>There is longstanding precedent in the tz database for decoupling tz
> >>zone labels from informal time zone names.  For example, the tz label
> >>"Europe/London" denotes local time in England, even though the people
> >>in England call their local time "Greenwich Mean Time".  The case of
> >>Beijing is somewhat similar.
> >>
> >>
> >
> >
> >
>