Re: Controversial region subtags (BCP 47)

On 7/8/11 2:36 AM, Gordon P. Hemsley wrote:
> [I just realized that this discussion might be appropriate for
> 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 =3D> Micronesia
>> IR: Islamic Republic of Iran =3D> Iran
>> KP: Democratic People's Republic of Korea =3D> North Korea
>> KR: Republic of Korea =3D> South Korea
>> LA: Lao People's Democratic Republic =3D> Laos
>> LY: Libyan Arab Jamahiriya =3D> Libya
>> SY: Syrian Arab Republic =3D> Syria
>> TZ: United Republic of Tanzania =3D> Tanzania
>> VA: Holy See (Vatican City State) =3D> Vatican City
>> VN: Viet Nam =3D> Vietnam
>>
>> Then there are the two Congos, which are differentiated by their capital
>> cities:
>> CD: The Democratic Republic of the Congo =3D> Congo-Kinshasa
>> CG: Congo =3D> Congo-Brazzaville
>>
>> There is one case where I think a change is simply a correction in
>> spelling:
>> RE: Reunion =3D> R=E9union
>>
>> 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 C=F4te 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: Cura=E7ao
>> 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 "C=F4te 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 "R=E9union"
> * 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=3Dmozilla%2Ftoolkit%2Flocales%2=
Fen-US%2Fchrome%2Fglobal%2FregionNames.properties
>
> [2] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=3D153104
>

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/db6ed5a3f66e8acd27a2eea671f6c9ec2=
291983f
[2] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=3D666662

-- =

Gordon P. Hemsley
http://gphemsley.org/ =95 http://gphemsley.org/blog/