Language name error (Occitan)

Hi Jordi, can you take a look at this request?

Hey Yannig,

I can't see the references to Provençal in Launchpad.

For example, https://launchpad.net/products/xqf/main/+pots/xqf/oc/+translate just says "Occitan", so I don't know where we need to do this change.

It may not be a problem from Rosetta, I saw "Provencal" and "Occitan" in Ubuntu, when I install or update Occitan language packs.

I choose the wrong distribution...

It's not a bug in Rosetta but in Ubuntu's language packs

On Wed, Oct 04, 2006 at 08:09:20AM -0000, Yannig MARCHEGAY (Kokoyaya) wrote:
> It may not be a problem from Rosetta, I saw "Provencal" and "Occitan" in
> Ubuntu, when I install or update Occitan language packs.

Aah! I guess these applications are taking the definition from the
iso-codes package. Have a look at the /usr/share/isoc-codes/iso_639.tab
file in there:

oci oci oc Occitan (post 1500); Provençal

To fix this, you should contact the authors (email Alastair McKinstry
<email address hidden> and Cristian Christian Perrier
<email address hidden> and explain your reasoning, let's see what they
think.

Jordi
--
Jordi Mallach Pérez -- Debian developer http://www.debian.org/
<email address hidden> <email address hidden> http://www.sindominio.net/
GnuPG public key information available at http://oskuro.net/

The iso 639 document should be updated too...

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. You reported this bug a while ago. We were wondering is this still an issue for you?
Thanks in advance.

Well, "Provençal" is still stuck to "Occitan" in Synaptic. It's not really an issue but I'd really like it to be corrected.

Have you write a mail to the authors ?

Jordi Mallach wrote:

To fix this, you should contact the authors (email Alastair McKinstry <email address hidden> and Cristian Christian Perrier <email address hidden> and explain your reasoning, let's see what they think.

What did they think ?

<email address hidden> answered my questions.

Well, certainly, but there is actually nothing to do for the iso-codes
maintainers (Alastair and I).

What you would probably need at any point is a locale to exist for
both languages.

Currently, there is an oc_FR locale, that is supposedly suitable for
"Occitan". Is this Languedocien ou Gascon, that I have no clue
about....maybe the following will make you able to figure out:

LC_TIME
abday "dim";"lun";"mar";"mec";"jóu";"ven";"sab"
day "dimenge";"diluns";"dimars";"dimecres";"dijóus";"divendres";"disabte"
abmon "gen";"feb";"mar";"abr";"mai";"jun";"jul";"agó";"set";"oct";"nov";"dec"

What you need are two locales named lnc_FR and gsc_FR (and maybe even
the same ones for IT, CH, SP and MC) to be written first. Otherwise,
translations will not be usable.

Apart from that there's indeed nothing that prevents you from working
on PO files named lnc.po and gsc.po for the packages you're working
on.

Here is my understanding of the problem: the language pack label "translation updates for language Occitan (post 1500); Provençal" is ambiguous or misleading.

I looked at other packages for similar cases. The package for Catalan also mentions Valencian and it has 5 locales associated (France, Spain, Italy...). Valencian is a dialect of Catalan and the locales ca_ES.UTF-8 UTF-8 ca_ES.UTF-8@valencia UTF-8 suggests that one can choose betwee Catalan and Valencian.

Occitan has several dialects, but Provençal is both a dialect and a synonym (in the English language) of Occitan. Wikipdia considers Provençal ambiguous for that reason and claims the term Occitan is clearer. Note also that there is only one supported locale (oc_FR) for this package so one cannot choose between Occitan and Provençal.

The ISO639-1 is a 2 letter for language classification. Occitan is `oc` and there is no code for any dialect. ISO639-2 is a 3 letter code for the same purpose. Occitan is `oci` and Provençal is `pro`. Provençal is considered to be pre 1500. There is no code for the Lengadocian.

How can we improve the situation? One option is the remove the mention of Provençal. Very few language packages have more than one designation for a language. Any person speaking Lengadocian or Provençal or Gascon will notice Occitan as their only choice, just like English is the only choice for English speaking people in the US, Canada, UK and so on. Once the package is installed, a choice of locales can further specialize the language variant (but not in the case of Occitan.

From a bug triage stand point, I must marked it as confirmed given that there is a problem. There is enough information to make a decision as to leave it the way it is or change the label.

BugQuad

Thanks a lot :-)

The other bug #83993 is more concentrated on the actual subject of adding new locales. However, I think the real place for doing that is (e)glibc so the bug report here on won't be easily spotted by anyone who can do something about it. This is afaik a common problem for all Linux distributions.