[Lazarus] DefaultTranslator, LCLGetLanguageIDs and Portuguese language trouble...

[Paulo Costa]

> On Sun, Jan 30, 2011 at 3:27 PM, Maxim Ganetsky<ganmax at narod.ru>  wrote:
>> 1. From Wikipedia I understood that there are substantial semantical
>> differences between Brazilian and Portugal Portuguese. At least half of the
>> people participating in this thread seem to share this opinion.
>

You are right. The semantical differences are huge specially in areas 
where there are many "new" words. Electronics/computers/software are 
some of those areas.

> That's ridiculous, a list of different prefered words (note that both
> versions are valid portuguese) doesn't make brazilian portuguese
> ununderstandable for people from other portuguese-speaking countries.
> Plus we aren't even talking about making a unified translation,
> although this would be possible. If there is enough space one can even
> add both variants, like: Mouse / Rato

"ununderstandable" is a strong word, but it makes us uncomfortable and 
confused, that is a fact.
Most software is localized differently for Portugal and for Brazil.

> Did you notice, by the way, that there is no brazilian or portugal
> portuguese wikipedia? Just portuguese wikipedia? Also Mac OS X does
> not have 2 separate translations.

And just like I said before that is a big wikipedia mistake. From your 
point of view it is good: it makes the Portuguese wikipedia Brazilian 
centric, but for us it is a loss.

I'm not very familiar with Mac OS X but I think it has separate 
translations:

http://macosxportugues.blogspot.com/2010/03/portugues-ou-portugues-pt.html

> Now, back to our topic, what is really at stake here is if the default
> language for all portuguese speaking countries should be the current
> translation or not. What is the default language made for? Obviously
> that for people that don't speak english or have a hard time reading
> it. For those you really intend to argue that english will be just as
> hard to read like brazilian portuguese? This afronts logic.

It depends, here in Portugal it is commonly thought that if you want to 
be a developer you must be able to use English tools and documentation.

> For users from Portugal, Angola, Mozambique, Green Cape and East Timor
> and other portuguese speaking countries, the default translation
> should be:
> a>  English

English

> b>  Brazilian portuguese
>
> Then the vote can decide the issue instead of having a unilateral decision.

Of course the best solution is to have a Portuguese (European) translation.
I'm volunteering to do that.
I already searched (very briefly) for instructions on what is necessary 
but only found:
http://wiki.lazarus.freepascal.org/Localization
where the topic "Localization of Lazarus" isn't yet a link :(


Paulo Costa