[Python-ideas] Support localization of unicode descriptions

[Terry Reedy]

On 7/10/2018 5:20 PM, David Mertz wrote:
> The problem with non-canonical translations of the Unicode character 
> names is that there is not one unique possible rendering into language 
> X. Equally, I could find synonyms in general English for the names, but 
> one would be official, the others at best informally clarifying.

If the Unicode consortium does not provide official translations, then 
we *might* 'bless' some other source.  The first place I would look 
would be the translators we already trust enough to display their work 
on the official doc page.

> For informational purposes I think it's great to have a third party 
> project to find out "Unicode character named 'Something In English' is 
> roughly translated as <whatever> in your native language." But it's hard 
> to see how an unofficial loose cross-language dictionary should be party 
> of the standard library.

The doc translations are intentionally not in the cpython repository and 
not in the cpython distribution and not considered part of the stdlib. 
In general, core devs have no particular expertise, interest, or time to 
vet translators and review translations.

A proposal to make turtle a package and put translations of turtle 
commands in a submodule got no traction.  "Put it on Pypi"

I have rejected proposals to put translations of IDLE's menus in an 
idlelib subdirectory, to be distributed with cpython as 'part' of the 
stdlib.  I am thinking about various ideas to allow users to customize 
the menu, either by editing a file or processing a download.  (For 
instance, the Japanese doc translation includes the IDLE chapter, which 
has a list of menu items and descriptions.)  But this is a different issue.

The repository for unicode description translations should also be other 
than the cpython repository.

> On Tue, Jul 10, 2018, 5:11 PM Terry Reedy 
> <tjreedy at udel.edu 
> <mailto:tjreedy at udel.edu>> wrote:
> 
>     On 7/10/2018 4:45 AM, Pander wrote:
> 
>      > This is a third party initiative. The translations are contributed by
>      > volunteers. I have talked with Python core developers and they
>     suggested
>      > to post this here, as it is for them out of scope for Python std lib.
> 
>     Python-ideas list is for discussion of python and the stdlib library.
>     This is not a place for prolonged discussion of pypi projects.
>     It *is* a place to discuss adding a hook that can be used to access
>     translations.
> 
>     There are both official doc translations, accessible from the official
>     doc pages, and others that are independent.  The official ones, at
>     least, are discussed on the doc-sig list
>     https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/doc-sig
>     There are currently 7 languages and coordinators listed at
>     https://devguide.python.org/experts/#documentation-translations
>     4 have progressed far enough to be listed in the drop-down box on
>     https://docs.python.org/3/
> 
>     I should think that these people should be asked if they want to be
>     involved with unicode description translations.  They should certainly
>     have some helpful advice.
> 
>     The description vocabulary is rather restricted, so a word translation
>     dictionary should be pretty easy.  For at least for some languages, it
>     should be possible to generate the 200000 description translations from
>     this. The main issues are word order and language-dependent 'word'
>     units.  Hence, the three English words "LATIN SMALL LETTER" become two
>     words in German, 'LATEINISCHER KLEINBUCHSTABE', versus three words in
>     Spanish, but in reverse order, 'LETRA PEQUEÑA LATINA'.  It is possible
>     that the doc translators already uses translation software that deal
>     with these issues.


-- 
Terry Jan Reedy