[Etoys] Translation on traditional chinese

洪朝貴 ckhung at cyut.edu.tw
Tue Dec 9 02:31:23 EST 2008


On Mon, Dec 08, 2008 at 10:45:08PM -0800, Yoshiki Ohshima wrote:
> At Mon, 08 Dec 2008 22:37:55 -0800,
> Yoshiki Ohshima wrote:
> > 
> > At Tue, 09 Dec 2008 14:28:32 +0800,
> > Steven Shiau wrote:
> > > 
> > > Could you please use "Chinese (Taiwan)" instead of "Chinese (TAIWAN, 
> > > PROVINCE OF CHINA)" here ?
> > 
> >   I know, I would rather do it if I could take the liberty...  But it
> > is defined in ISO:
> > 
> > http://www.iso.org/iso/country_codes/iso_3166-faqs/iso_3166_faqs_specific.htm
> 
>   But at the same time, we can provide the translation for the labels
> that shows up in the menu.  For making a version to be distributed in
> Taiwan, we can certainly make such a translated phrase visible on the
> screen.
> 
> -- Yoshiki
> 

Hi Yoshiki,

Thank you for your technical efforts.

For the political problem, I don't think it is enough to
have a Taiwan-specific version. We don't have a mechanism
like The Great Firewall of China:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Shield_Project
and therefore people in Taiwan will inevitably see the
discrepency between the international version and the
local version. It surely will provoke negative emotions.

My proposal is: simply remove Taiwan. Please label it as
"Traditional Chinese" or "pre-modern Chinese". Taiwan does not
appear in the UN list of country names, and we are talking
about languages, not countries, so it is reasonable
not to mention Taiwan at all. What do you think? This will
still provoke some negative responses, but this is as close
to an acceptable solution as I can come up with. After all,
these 2.4M people who have been enjoying freedom of speech
for a few decades may better grasp the meaning of free
software than the 1.3B people who never did. And eventually
an FS project will need the help of these 2.4M people to
explain this to those 1.3B people. Many thanks in advance for
your thoughtful considerations that prioritize human right
and freedom of speech.

CK

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