Re: Controversial region subtags (BCP 47)
Gordon P. Hemsley
mozilla.dev.i18n, so cross-posting this reply there, as well.]
On 7/7/11 1:40 PM, Gordon P. Hemsley wrote:
>
> Tim has continuously raised the issue about politically-charged changes
> to the names of regions associated with region subtags. While I am
> sympathetic to his point, I had not spent much time on it, because I
> didn't think we were at that point yet.
>
> But then I realized that the issues he was referring to were actually in
> the patch that is up for review right now.
>
> As such, I did a review of the changes to region names that are in that
> patch, so see what I need to override.
>
> Some of them are fairly straightforward, simply using the name that is
> more common in English:
> FM: Federated States of Micronesia => Micronesia
> IR: Islamic Republic of Iran => Iran
> KP: Democratic People's Republic of Korea => North Korea
> KR: Republic of Korea => South Korea
> LA: Lao People's Democratic Republic => Laos
> LY: Libyan Arab Jamahiriya => Libya
> SY: Syrian Arab Republic => Syria
> TZ: United Republic of Tanzania => Tanzania
> VA: Holy See (Vatican City State) => Vatican City
> VN: Viet Nam => Vietnam
>
> Then there are the two Congos, which are differentiated by their capital
> cities:
> CD: The Democratic Republic of the Congo => Congo-Kinshasa
> CG: Congo => Congo-Brazzaville
>
> There is one case where I think a change is simply a correction in
> spelling:
> RE: Reunion => Réunion
>
> In the case of the United Arab Emirates (AE), I am curious as to why the
> old codebase uses 'U.A.E.' instead of the full name. Was there political
> motivation for that? Because, if not, I am inclined to replace it with
> the full expanded name.
>
> In addition, there's the region encoded by the subtag 'CI': Its French
> name is Côte d'Ivoire, which translates to Ivory Coast in English. As I
> understand it, the region prefers its French name to be used even in
> English, but the English translation is common in en-GB. (I'm not sure
> what the usage is in en-US.) Which is our preferred name?
>
> In the case of Macedonia (MK), it seems that the preferred usage is
> 'Macedonia' first, with the 'former Yugoslav Republic' abbreviated
> after. Is that correct? (Wikipedia seems to suggest that this issue will
> soon be resolved altogether, which would be nice.)
>
> In the case of Taiwan (TW), I take it that the region objects to the
> mention of 'Province of China' following 'Taiwan'?
>
> So, those are the cases that I know something about. There are also a
> few cases that I would like more information on:
>
> Previously, there was a subtag 'MF', which indicated the region of
> "Saint Martin". Now, it appears, there is a new subtag 'SX' for "Sint
> Maarten (Dutch part)", which renamed 'MF' to "Saint Martin (French
> part)". Now, my question is, essentially: Do we want to keep the
> parentheticals or remove them?
>
> And then there is the case of 'SH' and 'TA': 'SH' previously represented
> "Saint Helena". Now it has been augmented to represent "Saint Helena,
> Ascension and Tristan da Cunha". However, at the same time, 'TA' was
> introduced to represent "Tristan da Cunha" on its own. This confuses me;
> can anyone enlighten as to what the difference is? Do we want to change
> one, or should we leave them as-is?
>
> And, finally, there were some other new additions:
> BQ: Bonaire, Saint Eustatius and Saba
> CP: Clippterton Island
> CW: Curaçao
> DG: Diego Garcia
> EA: Ceuta, Melilla
> EU: European Union
> IC: Canary Islands
>
> I don't anticipate any conflicts with those names, but I wanted to
> mention them to make sure I wasn't missing anything.
>
> The uncontroversial controversial changes have already been made to the
> file that generates the master list, but I wanted to get feedback on the
> rest of them before I commit the changes and update the patch.
>
> Hope this helps everybody.
>
> Gordon
>
I just did some archaeology[1], and it does not appear that as much
thought was put into these names as I had assumed. The relevant
discussion is in bug 153104.[2]
Given this, I will use my judgement (plus guidance from Wikipedia) on a
per-subtag basis as to whether to use the default name or change it,
unless I receive a specific complaint (e.g. TW and MK).
That means that I'll be doing the following unless instructed otherwise:
* Reverting AE to "United Arab Emirates"
* Reverting CI to "Côte d'Ivoire"
* Reverting FM to "Federated States of Micronesia"
* Keeping MK as "Macedonia, F.Y.R. of"
* Keeping TW as "Taiwan"
* Changing MF and SX to "Saint-Martin" (French) and "Sint Maarten"
(Dutch), respectively
* Leaving SH and TA as-is
* Leaving IR, KP, KR, LA, LY, SY, TZ, VA, and VN as-is
* Leaving CD and CG as-is
* Accepting RE change to "Réunion"
* Accepting additions of BQ, CP, CW, DG, EA, EU, and IC
(These are all relative to how they exist within the current codebase.)
Any objections?
Gordon
[1]
http://bonsai.mozilla.org/cvslog.cgi?file=mozilla%2Ftoolkit%2Flocales%2Fen-US%2Fchrome%2Fglobal%2FregionNames.properties
[2] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=153104
--
Gordon P. Hemsley
http://gphemsley.org/ • http://gphemsley.org/blog/
Gordon P. Hemsley
Having heard no objection in the past 12 hours, I've committed the
change to my repo[1].
I'll give it a little more time before I respin the patch for bug 666662[2].
[1]
https://github.com/GPHemsley/BCP47/commit/db6ed5a3f66e8acd27a2eea671f6c9ec2291983f
[2] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=666662
Gordon P. Hemsley
> Having heard no objection in the past 12 hours, I've committed the
> change to my repo[1].
>
> I'll give it a little more time before I respin the patch for bug
> 666662[2].
>
> [1]
> https://github.com/GPHemsley/BCP47/commit/db6ed5a3f66e8acd27a2eea671f6c9ec2291983f
>
> [2] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=666662
>
I have respun the patch:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=666662
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/attachment.cgi?id=545051