registry team mailing list archive

[Matthew Paul Thomas <mpt@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

The Debian maintainers are correct about the ISO639-2 names. But those
names are not for selecting languages, they are for classifying
languages. A simple way to demonstrate this is to imagine if someone was
to translate Debian or Ubuntu into the Blackfoot language, and someone
else was to translate it into the Malecite-Passamaquoddy language.
Following ISO639-2 to the letter would require them both to be listed as
"Algonquian languages", which would be nonsense, because they're
mutually unintelligible languages. "Algonquian languages" is a useful
classification, but it's a useless identifier.

I would be surprised if there is any software in Ubuntu *or* in Debian
that uses iso-codes for classifying languages, rather than for offering
language choices. So if iso-codes sticks exactly to ISO639-2, then it is
not fit for the purpose of offering language choices, and there needs to
be a language-codes package or something to override or replace it.

A much simpler solution, though, would be to recognize that the ISO639-2
list is also internally inconsistent. For example, it has items for
"English, Old (ca.450-1100)" and "English, Middle (1100-1500)" -- but it
doesn't have "English, Modern (1500-)", it just has "English". Greek
should be treated the same way.

The equivalent bug in Launchpad Translations was bug 81158, fixed in
2007.

-- 
"Greek, Modern (1453-)" name contains distracting detail
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/681872
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Administrators, which is the registrant for Debian.