Stuart Bishop <stuart@stuartbishop.net> writes:

Can anyone point me to a public domain or liberally licenced database of translations of timezone names?

You might try the CLDR project. For pointers, please see <http://www.twinsun.com/tz/tz-link.htm> and look for "translations". I don't know of any translations in gettext format, though. They'd be nice to have. If you find (or produce) some, please let us know. One problem with gettext format is that there might be multiple translations for the same English-language abbreviation. For example, "IST" is short for either Israel Standard Time or for India Standard Time, and it's possible that the acronyms in (say) Russian would be different. Hence gettext("IST") might not work as the user would expect, in a Russian locale.