FW: Localization of timezones from zone.tab
Chuck Soper
chucks2 at veladg.com
Tue Jul 10 21:49:10 UTC 2007
Thanks for your response. I now remember meeting
someone from IBM at an IMUG meeting at Apple; he
described metazones.
What is the best way for me to stay informed of
CLDR related to time zones? And is there a way to
make comments, suggestions or discuss?
Chuck
At 1:54 PM -0700 7/10/07, Mark Davis wrote:
>We have actually instituted an alternative
>mechanism called 'metazones', which are somewhat
>like what you describe. They basically coalesce
>zones that have the same behavior in modern
>time. However, they have some further
>restrictions, and we only put this in recently
>thus haven't gathered enough data to be useful
>yet.
>
>Mark
>
>On 7/10/07, Chuck Soper <<mailto:chucks2 at veladg.com>chucks2 at veladg.com> wrote:
>
>I've been on the tz list for several years. I
>have tried to follow the Time Zone Localizations
>topic for CLDR.
>
>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?
>
>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.
>
>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.
>
>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.
>
>Chuck
>
>
>At 10:44 AM -0700 7/10/07, Mark Davis wrote:
>
>>The Unicode CLDR project
>>(<http://unicode.org/cldr/>http://unicode.org/cldr/)
>>does supply translations for timezone IDs.
>>There are a few caveats.
>>
>>1. 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).
>>
>>2. 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.
>>
>>3. Translators can optionally add other
>>variations: daylight (summer) time, standard
>>(winter) time, and generic time, both
>>abbreviated and long.
>>
>>4. These choices percolate out to clients
>>of CLDR: Google, IBM, Apple, Adobe, and many
>>others.
>>
>Mark
>
>On 7/10/07, Olson, Arthur David (NIH/NCI) [E]
><<mailto:olsona at dc37a.nci.nih.gov>olsona at dc37a.nci.nih.gov>
>wrote:
>
>I'm forwarding this message from Vincent Untz,
>who is not on the time zone mailing list.
>
>Those of you who are on the time zone mailing
>list should direct replies appropriately.
>
> --ado
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Vincent Untz [mailto:<mailto:vuntz at gnome.org> vuntz at gnome.org]
>Sent: Tuesday, July 10, 2007 1:24 PM
>To: <mailto:tz at lecserver.nci.nih.gov>tz at lecserver.nci.nih.gov
>Subject: Localization of timezones from zone.tab
>
>Hi,
>
>[please keep me cc'ed since I'm not subscribed to this list]
>
>I know that, at least in GNOME, there are now three places where we
>parse zone.tab to get a list of timezones supported by the OS. I suppose
>other projects are also doing this. This list is then presented to the
>user to let him choose the timezone.
>
>The problem here is that we let the user choose strings which look like
>"Antarctica/South_Pole". This is not really good for
>non-english-speaking people ;-)
>
>Of course, we can add all the timezones to our list of strings to
>translate, but this means all projects needing to do so will duplicate
>this work and the translations.
>
>I'd like the tz database to ship translations in po files. This would
>imply the following:
>
>+ create a small script to generate a POT file from zone.tab (easy)
>+ submit the POT file to the translation project [1] (or any other
>
> place that helps with translation)
>
>+ add the po files for translation to the tz database
>+ choose a gettext domain
>
>(Of course, I'm quite probably forgetting about a step :-))
>
>I've seen that this topic has been discussed before [2], but the
>proposition there was really more ambitious, so I'm hoping a simple
>approach would be welcomed.
>
>What do you think?
>
>Thanks,
>
>[1] <http://translationproject.org/>http://translationproject.org/
>[2]
><http://osdir.com/ml/time.tz/2004-09/msg00000.html>
>http://osdir.com/ml/time.tz/2004-09/msg00000.html
>
>Vincent
>
>--
>Les gens heureux ne sont pas pressés.
>
>
>
>
>--
>Mark
>
>
>
>
>
>--
>Mark
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