Currently, the main effort to localize time-zone information is in the Common Language Data Repository (I think that's what it's called, I know it's CLDR for initials), hosted at http://www.unicode.org/cldr; for each zone, there is the option to localize two names (DST and standard), the initials for those names, and the example city. J Andrew Lipscomb, CPA*ABV, ASA Decosimo Corporate Finance 900 Tallan Building 2 Union Square Chattanooga, TN 37402 423.756.7100 Fax 423.266.6671 www.dcf.decosimo.com -----Original Message----- From: Olson, Arthur David (NIH/NCI) [E] [mailto:olsona@dc37a.nci.nih.gov] Sent: Tue 10 July 2007 13:26 To: tz@lecserver.nci.nih.gov Cc: vuntz@gnome.org Subject: FW: Localization of timezones from zone.tab 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:vuntz@gnome.org] Sent: Tuesday, July 10, 2007 1:24 PM To: tz@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/ [2] http://osdir.com/ml/time.tz/2004-09/msg00000.html Vincent -- Les gens heureux ne sont pas pressés.

The Unicode CLDR project (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] <olsona@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:vuntz@gnome.org] Sent: Tuesday, July 10, 2007 1:24 PM To: tz@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/ [2] http://osdir.com/ml/time.tz/2004-09/msg00000.html

Vincent

-- Les gens heureux ne sont pas pressés.

-- Mark