Re: Serbian (sr) language translation team: maintainer unresponsive

[Pablo Saratxaga <pablo mandrakesoft com>]

Kaixo!

On Tue, Apr 08, 2003 at 07:08:38AM +0200, Karl Eichwalder wrote:

> Aside, different word usage does not constitute a different language.

A language is a language when the users of it decide so.
I mean, there are cases of people considering a single language what
covers a wide span of dialects (Arabic is a classical exemple); and on
the other hand, some are considered different languages while they
are linguistically very close (eg: Portuguese and Galician)
 
> In Switzerland, Austria and Bavaria many a lot words are used which are
> unknown in the Germany (okay, Bavaria is a part of Germany ;) ).  But
> they all speak variants of the German language. 

The main point is they all *agree* on the fact they spoke the same language;
in particular they agree, and expect, to have texts produced for all
german-speaking people to be produced in one version only; and translators
will probably choose carefully their words to be more neutral than when
doing a normal speach.

Same thing for Spanish, French, etc.

> They is valid for 'es', 'en' or 'pt' etc., where 'pt' is an extreme
> example because 'pt_BR' is always required.

Yes, pt/pt_BR is special, as people agree it is the same language; yet
they act as if they where two different ones :-)
The fact that almost all computer terms are different is a good incentive
to keep them separate in computer related translations.

Now; for serbo-croatian languages; their uses agree to consider them
as the same language; most than probably the war has something to do
with that fact much more than any linguistic reality.
But languages are more social than linguistic, so if people say they are
different, then they are different, that is.

-- 
Ki ça vos våye bén,
Pablo Saratxaga

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