Re: Re: [i18n] String Changes in iso-codes
(please reply to list)
Quoting Tetralet (tetralet@pchome.com.tw):
> > This is exactly the reason for which I suggested the name change for
> > "Taiwan" in iso-codes. As far as I know and as far as I have
> > understood, the "Taiwan, province of China" name is accepted by both
> > People Republic of China and "Republic of China" ("Taiwan").
>
> Sorry to say that,
> But, I think I CAN'T agree with it.
OK, saying "accepted by both" was probably mistaken. Point taken.
I probably mistakenly interpreted the political situation with not
enough background.
> To deference to the Taiwan people, please replace "Taiwan, Province of
> China" with "Taiwan, Republic of China".
> or, To avoid some political arguments, just replace "Taiwan, Province of
> China" with "Taiwan".
The consensus in Debian about this topic and similar topics
(Macedonia==FYROM, etc) is that the only way is to use internationnally
recognised standards.
This is how free software works: use standards, create them when they
don't exist, but never adapt them to our needs.
ISO-3166 short name for TW is "Taiwan, Province of China" in English
and "Taïwan, Province de Chine" in French. ISO-3166 is a bilingual
standard, so no other official translations exist for other languages.
This means indeed that translators are entirely free to use the
wording they want in their translations.
There are lots of other topics for which standards like ISO-3166 are
hurting some feelings (I personnally feel that Tibet should have its
own code....I'm not sure that all Israeli people like "Palestinian
Territory, Occupied" and so on). .
This does not allow us to change standards according to these
feelings. This just gives us the duty of closely following it....which
is exactly what Alastair McKinstry does, with some help from myself to
save his time.
I hope this made the point a little bit clearer of why this won't
change...but also, I hope this mail gave you clues about what you can
do if "Taiwan, Province of China" hurts the feelings of people using
the zh_TW language.....
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