Ubuntu
language-selector package

  1. Bug #991002
  2. Comment #12

Comment 12 for bug 991002

Revision history for this message
Christian Perrier (bubulle) wrote : Re: Change name for bn-BD from 'Bengali(Bangladesh)' to 'Bangla(Bangladesh)')

Constitution française, article II "De la souveraineté" :

"La langue de la République est le français. "

Should we then change the name of "FR" in iso-codes to "Français"? I guess you'll say "no" and you'll be right.

The standard is a standard for names of languages *in the English language*.

And, indeed, when I read the text of the Bangladesh constituion in English (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_Bangladesh), it reads "The state language is Bengali".

I guess that the original text is in Bengali and probably says "The state language is Bangla". This is perfectly fine, of course.

We can also find many governmental resources in Bangladesh that use "Bengali" in their *English* pages. For instance: http://www.bangladesh.gov.bd/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=116&Itemid=190

What's confusing here is that most Indic languages are also used in a transcripted manner, so people reading a list of languages think they should read the transcription of the language name....while they're reading the name of the language in English.

I don't want to hurt my friends in Bangladesh, but, really, the original statement in this bug report is incorrect. And I would be very very very deeply sorry if Ubuntu patches iso-codes this way. Also, please think that doing so you're opening a big giant can of worms. You'll very quickly end up in political fights, either with language names or (more likely) with country names.

I am maintaining iso-codes for 8 years now....and the only solution I found to avoid this is to stick to the standard. Strictly.

If people want things to be changed, then they have to make the standard changed.

Another reference : http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=ben. Ethnologue is a highly recognized resource when it comes at languages (indeed, SIL International, who maintains the site, is also the maintainer of the ISO 639-3 standard). Here, again, we have "Bengali" (Bangla appears in alternate names, admitedly, but we really can't add alternate names in lists.....and, anyway, they are not maintained in the standard).

So, really really, don't patch iso-codes in Ubuntu.

By the way, I renamed bn_IN.po to bn.po. This should be effective in the next release of iso-codes, due out November 1st (assuming Tobias Quatamer uses his usual schedule)