[Ardour-Dev] portugese (and other) translators .... important question

[Rui Nuno Capela]

hi Paul et al.

On Tue, 19 Jan 2010 19:03:07 -0500, Paul Davis wrote:
> it turns out that we've been doing something a bit wrong with
> translations for years. given a language, say portugese (my favorite
> in the whole world, btw),

that's flattering, but are you referring to pt_PT (european portuguese,
from Portugal) or pt_BR (american portuguese, brazilian from Brazil:) ? i
assume its the latter as you may find it being far more popular and chances
are that is the one you've been hearing all the time, all around
(imigrants, bossa/samba music, etc.)

i tend to agree that portuguese (pt_PT) and brazilian (pt_BR) are two
_different_ languages, although sharing one same trunk (archaic xv century
portuguese) both forms have been drifting apart on all parameters: lexical,
syntactical, grammatical and phonetically. so you cannot say in complete
exactitude that one is just a dialect form of the other. they're different
branches already. perhaps, european portuguese (pt_PT) have evolved through
modern age ways while brazilian (pt_BR) still is the most resemblant to
portuguese as it was spoken 5 centuries ago.


> and more than one local variant (e.g. pt_PT or pt_BR), it appears that
> for gettext to work correctly, we *should* pick one of the variants and
> install it not as pt_WHEREVER but as just "pt".
> 

again, brazilian is far way more popular, by orders of maginute, even in
Japan :)

so make it pt_BR the one. i do confess i have neglected pt_PT translation,
ever since Ardour 0.99.3, so i guess the former is way better maintained
anyway.


> at the present time, portugese is the only language for which ardour
> has  two variant translations (pt_PT and pt_BR). this means that we
> have to pick one as the "standard" and have the other as a variant
> that will be used if the used specifically asks for it. i do not want
> to start a language war, and i don't see an obvious way to make the
> choice between the two of them. so i ask for you help in deciding this
> question.
> note that both translations will continue to be available - the
> question is only about which one is installed as "pt" rather than
> "pt_PT" or "pt_BR".
> 

i suggest LANG=pt should lead to pt_BR translation as default. if one
really wants the european form, assume it explicitly with LANG=pt_PT .


cheers
-- 
rncbc aka Rui Nuno Capela
rncbc at rncbc.org