Re: [libreoffice-l10n] Language names should be in the target language chars

Hi 锁琨珑,

On Thursday, 2014-04-10 18:26:44 +0800, 锁琨珑 wrote:

> So far, the language names shown in "Tools - Options - Language
> Settings" are in the localed language name strings.
>
> I believe those language names should be changed to the target names
> chars for all UIs, like the language listed here:
> http://zh-cn.libreoffice.org/international-sites/
> (see the second column)

While having language names in their native language is fine for
interfaces where a user only wants to pick his/her own language, it is
not desirable for interfaces where several languages can be chosen for
different purposes that are not native to the user. Let me explain some
disadvantages:

* a document containing language attribution the user doesn't know the
  native name of, s/he will see a meaningless entry in the language list
* seeing the language list, a user will not know what languages are
  offered except those s/he can somehow deduce
* wanting to prepare a document with different locale settings (e.g.
  using different currencies or formatting) the user would have to know
  the native names
* a developer adding a language to the language listbox would have to
  know that name in the native language; yes, CLDR in the mean time
  provides native names of most frequently used languages, but not for
  the not so frequently used that now are occasionally requested; s/he'd
  have to take the word of the one requesting that language
* for developers this gets even more cumbersome for languages that can
  be written in different scripts, or scripts the developer doesn't know
  at all; would you know how to correctly write Arabic and enter it on
  your native keyboard? Or Mongolian in the Mongolian script? You'd have
  to rely on copy&paste and pray that your editor handles all Unicode
  characters, RTL writing direction and so forth.


> I am thinking about this because of the following reason:
>
>   * It's a waste of time for localizers to translate every foreign
>     language names to their own locale. Even translated, it may not be
>     correct.

That's about 350 language names we currently have, of an overall of some
hundred thousand words to translate (including help), doesn't really
look significant to me. Plus, once translated the names almost never
change.

>   * In case the users are trying to switch between languages, there may
>     be confusion (for example, if I want to test something in Franch UI,
>     and after that I want to change back to Chinese UI it's really
>     difficult to find the right one in the list box.

There's an easy trick for that: assign the language to a portion of text
and reload the document in the other UI language.

> And there is a corrensponding bug report here:
> Bug 59901 - UI: Name of each language in target language
> https://www.libreoffice.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=59901

I'll add the same comment there.

  Eike

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