Bug#229325: country/region should be used
Quoting Wang WenRui (wangwr@ustc.edu):
> Well, the ISO-3166 _is_ "country or area & region codes" according to UN[1],
> it is a "coding standard for coding the names of countries and dependent
> areas" according to Wikipedia[2]. Note that from iso.org[3]: the country
> names used in ISO 3166-1 are all from United Nations sources. Using
> these country names officially notified by the countries to the UN
> Secretary General helps in keeping ISO 3166-1 politically neutral and
> thus acceptable to as many users as possible.
>
> Using "country code" _for short_ may be okay in some occasions, But not
> fittable in a formal installer of the best GNU/Linux distribution, when
> users "choose a country" from a list with
I think that the problem indeed happens only with Chinese (this is
becoming an habit...:-))).
We have two options:
-use "Choose your contry or area:" and have all translators change
their translation. Not a big deal, but maybe a headache (/me already
tries to imagine how I will translate to french). And, for all of
them except Chinese, this will make no difference...
-leave this as is and ask the Chinese translator(s) to change the
chinese translation to "Choose your country or area...."or whatever
will sound the most appropriate
I'm in favour of the 2nd choice, clearly.
BTW, about the "politically neutral" choices of ISO on that matter: I
don't understand them. They are *not* politically neutral in my opinion.
As far as I know, and though I'm not in any matter a specialist in
international politics, HK for instance is a full part of the country
named "People's Republic of China", codename CN. The territory has a
special status inside CN, close to some kind of autonomy.
Indeed this is not drastically different from some autonomous regions
in some countries (for instance Catalunya in Spain, or even USA
states). So, I don't really understand why HK is still in ISO-3166. We
are in 2004, not in 1999 anymore.
I probably have to check the ISO-3166 maintenance agency FAQ in order
to understand (the ISO 639 FAQ already explained very well why
Traditional and Simplified Chinese share the same two-letter code).
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