# locales: languages vs. countries

**URL:** <https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/locales-languages-vs-countries/408>\
**Category:** CSL Development\
**Created:** [January 9, 2008, 12:13pm UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/locales-languages-vs-countries/408 "2008-01-09T12:13:22Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Bruce\_D\_Arcus1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/4bbf92/32.png) [@Bruce\_D\_Arcus1](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/u/Bruce_D_Arcus1)\
**Post date:** [January 9, 2008, 12:13pm UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/locales-languages-vs-countries/408/1 "2008-01-09T12:13:22Z")

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Simon,

Thanks for adding the locales files to the repo!

But a question, prompted by a bug reported on the Zotero forums with  
German citations:

[http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/1924/two-export-problems-with-citations-and-bibliographical-items-in-ooo/](http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/1924/two-export-problems-with-citations-and-bibliographical-items-in-ooo/)

Why are the files all localized to the country, rather than (also) the  
generic language?

I was sort of thinking we’d have a generic “locales-de.xml” file, for  
example, and perhaps then the specific country files where it varies.

In German, for example, it makes no sense to have a locale for the  
German-speaking region of Switzerland because, while they do have spoken  
dialectics (in fact many of them) that vary considerably from Germany,  
they write in “High German” (e.g. the same exact language as in  
Germany). As a result, the two files should be exactly the same. I  
presume the same is likely the case in Austria as well.

Likewise, I doubt written Spanish varies enough across Spain and Latin  
America to need more than one locale file.

Related, what protocol do you suggest for soliciting help from users  
like this on the translations? Should I ask her to contact me and add  
the new translations myself? Or do you have some system for this already?

We definitely need help here, BTW, b/c the German locales files are  
quite thin, which is why the user above is seeing that bug.

Bruce

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**Author:** ![Dan\_Stillman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ecb155/32.png) [@Dan\_Stillman](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/u/Dan_Stillman)\
**Post date:** [January 9, 2008, 7:03pm UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/locales-languages-vs-countries/408/2 "2008-01-09T19:03:19Z")

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> Why are the files all localized to the country, rather than (also) the  
> generic language?
> 
> I was sort of thinking we’d have a generic “locales-de.xml” file, for  
> example, and perhaps then the specific country files where it varies.

We have a locales-de-DE.xml file, which is what you’re looking for. Use  
of the second “DE” was a quick workaround for a Zotero bug, but yes, it  
should be locales-de.xml. (You’ll see that the main German locale in  
chrome/locale is indeed ‘de’.) We were going to change the CSL one back  
once we fixed the bug.

> In German, for example, it makes no sense to have a locale for the  
> German-speaking region of Switzerland because, while they do have spoken  
> dialectics (in fact many of them) that vary considerably from Germany,  
> they write in “High German” (e.g. the same exact language as in  
> Germany). As a result, the two files should be exactly the same. I  
> presume the same is likely the case in Austria as well.

The locales are determined by the users of Babelzilla, the site we use  
to handle localizations. Firefox only offers a single German  
localizations, ‘de’, but on Babelzilla they seem to feel that de, de-AT,  
and de-CH all merit separate localizations. Comparing de to de-CH, I  
only see a few differences–for example, “Gr��e des Kunstwerks” vs.  
“Gr�sse des Kunstwerks”. According to Wikipedia, “In Switzerland and  
Liechtenstein ss usually replaces every �.” Supporting that convention  
isn’t too big of a deal–we could just copy strings from ‘de’ over any  
untranslated strings in ‘de-AT’ and ‘de-CH’, and Babelzilla users could  
change them if they preferred. Or we could just remove de-AT and de-CH  
and probably not offend anyone too much, but we’d probably want to ask  
someone from Austria or Switzerland first.

> Likewise, I doubt written Spanish varies enough across Spain and Latin  
> America to need more than one locale file.

There is only one locale file for Spanish currently, but, for what it’s  
worth, Firefox does have an Argentinian localization of Firefox, es-AR.

> Related, what protocol do you suggest for soliciting help from users  
> like this on the translations? Should I ask her to contact me and add  
> the new translations myself? Or do you have some system for this already?

I think it’s best to continue to do them through Babelzilla, since  
there’s a great community there and that’s where virtually all of the  
localizations have come from. While changes could be checked into your  
SVN directly, they’d be more likely to get lost when we merged the  
locales from Babelzilla. (Currently, we use a script to merge English  
strings into the other locales files for missing strings, since Zotero  
currently has file-level, not term-level, fallback to English. The  
upshot is that there are never missing strings in any of the locales and  
it’s therefore more complicated to determine when a string has been  
localized, so it’s easiest to just make changes in one place.)

We haven’t yet uploaded Zotero 1.0.2 to Babelzilla, however, so if you  
want to put in those German changes from the user now, go ahead, and  
we’ll upload as soon as you’re done.

> We definitely need help here, BTW, b/c the German locales files are  
> quite thin, which is why the user above is seeing that bug.

The “undefined” part shouldn’t happen either way, so that would seem to  
be a separate bug, but yes, the German locales are rather thin.

- Dan

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**Author:** ![Bruce\_D\_Arcus1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/4bbf92/32.png) [@Bruce\_D\_Arcus1](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/u/Bruce_D_Arcus1)\
**Post date:** [January 9, 2008, 7:08pm UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/locales-languages-vs-countries/408/3 "2008-01-09T19:08:03Z")

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Dan Stillman wrote:

> I think it’s best to continue to do them through Babelzilla …

OK, but how does _that_ work?

Feel free to post a response to Helga (who has already contacted me) on  
the forums.

Bruce