Add Papiamento variants

Ideas
1

I work on open source data collection software used across the world. We have a user who wants to contribute Papiamento translations and has said the following:

we have two orthographies. pap_AW (for the Papiamento in Aruba) and pap_CW (for the Papiamento in Curaçao and Bonaire. These differ quite a lot.

What does it take for Transifex to consider variants for inclusion?

Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like those variants are part of the IANA subtag registry: https://www.iana.org/assignments/language-subtag-registry/language-subtag-registry

I have asked the user whether he know of efforts to submit them for consideration to IANA and if not will encourage him to do so.

I see evidence of some systems using the variants: Locale Helper: pap_AW, Codings: Contexts

2

Hi @lognaturel

My name is Carlos from Transifex support.

Transifex identifies more than 290+ languages and many more associated with a locale code. These languages adhere to the ISO 639-1 standard of language names and locales. You might fall back to 639-2 or 639-3 if your language is not covered in 639-1. For a complete list of supported languages, please take a look at our Languages page.

Suppose your language isn’t on the Languages page, and your files appear in a shortened version like ‘xx_YY’. In that case, you can help us provide the necessary information so we can add your language to Transifex

For every language Transifex supports, there’s a set of information or rules that are followed by the system. Let’s take, for example, Brazilian Portuguese:

  • name: Portuguese (Brazillian)

  • code: pt_BR

  • code_aliases: pt-br pt-BR

  • nplurals: 2

  • pluralequation: (n > 1)

  • rule_zero: -

  • rule_one: n is one

  • rule_two: -

  • rule_few: -

  • rule_many: -

  • rule_other: -

In detail:

  • name is the language name in the ‘Language (Nationality)’ format. You can omit the nationality for general languages like ‘pt’.

  • code is ISO 639-1 language code. You might fall back to 639-2 or 639-3 if your language is not covered in 639-1.

  • code_aliases are aliases separated with spaces (e.g., pt-br pt-BR).

  • nplurals is the number of plurals allowed by the language. These are quite common in .po files.

  • pluralequation is an equation to distinguish the plural rules for the available nplurals. These are also quite common in .po files, too.

The rule fields MUST reflect the exact number of nplural set to the language. If your language has nplural = 2, then only 2 of the rule fields must be filled in.

The rule_other is considered the general rule. All languages must follow this rule — even those that do not have plurals (such as Japanese). The rule_other is considered a general fallback, like an ‘else’ statement for all other possible rules. If there is a case that doesn’t fit into the pluralequation, rule_other will be used.

Examples can be found here. We usually get rule information from unicode.org.

When we add support for a language, we follow the BCP47 standard. The multiple language locales are based on region subtags.

If you are able to provide this rules we can ask to include this variants for Papiamento

Best regards,

1 Like
3

Hi There. Thanks for helping with this subject!

The locale for pap_CW is here: Locale Helper: pap_CW

This site gives some insight on nplural: Language Plural Rules

Here’s some general info about the differences: Papiamento vs Papiamentu: Language, Culture & Identity in the Caribbean | Storyteller Travel

Don’t get confused with PapiamentO and PapiamentU. In English, the language is called ‘Papiamento’ just like the language of Germany is called ‘German’.
In the Papiamento of Curaçao and Bonaire, the language is called ‘papiamentu’ just like german is called ‘Deutsch’ in German. The Papiamento of Aruba is called ‘papiamento’ in the Papiamento of Aruba.

The ISO 639 code is ‘pap’, and it is not in ISO 639-1 because that has only 2 letter names. In 639-2 all 2-letter names get 3-letter aliases and some 3 letter names are added, amongst others ‘pap’.

Regional codes are AW for Aruba (it’s also the toplevel domain), CW for Curaçao (also top level domain) and BQ for Bonaire. Bonaire is part of a country the Netherlands and therefore a specific region code was invented to not be confused with the NL regional code.

We choose for pap_AW and pap_CW, while pap_CW is also for Bonaire. But there could always be room for pap_BQ if needed, but at the moment pap_BQ and pap_CW can be seen as one.

(ISO 3166-2:CW - Wikipedia, ISO 3166-2:AW - Wikipedia, ISO 3166-2:BQ - Wikipedia. Strangely enough BQ is also Saba and St Eustatius, where no Papiamento is spoken at all)

Based on what I could find on Github (but this seems an archived file)
transifex-old-core/transifex/languages/fixtures/all_languages.json at bae89a6e2e2f05bda08d5900b8e112ef5306268f · transifex/transifex-old-core · GitHub, this may or may not what you need:

"fields": {
  "rule_few": "",
  "code_aliases": "pap-CW pap-cw ",
  "code": "pap_CW",
  "name": "Papiamento (Curaçao and Bonaire)",
  "description": "",
  "pluralequation": "(n != 1)",
  "rule_zero": "",
  "rule_two": "",
  "rule_one": "n is 1",
  "rule_other": "everything else",
  "specialchars": "",
  "rule_many": "",
  "nplurals": 1
}

"fields": {
  "rule_few": "",
  "code_aliases": "pap-AW pap-aw ",
  "code": "pap_AW",
  "name": "Papiamento (Aruba)",
  "description": "",
  "pluralequation": "(n != 1)",
  "rule_zero": "",
  "rule_two": "",
  "rule_one": "n is 1",
  "rule_other": "everything else",
  "specialchars": "",
  "rule_many": "",
  "nplurals": 1
}

I think nplurals is 1, because we have only one plural form, namely by suffixing -nan to the word.

See also https://bankodipalabra.com and https://papiamentu.info

Please let me know if you need more info or if I can help in any way.

Cheers
Ace Suares

1 Like
4

Hi @acesuares

I really appreciate all the information that you kindly shared with us. I just want to let you know that I raise the ticket to add the support for pap_CW locale.

As soon as it is available I will let you know.

Best regards,
Carlos

1 Like
5

Great! Thanks 1234567891011121314151617181920

6

any progress? 1234567901234567890

7

Hey @acesuares,

I am Antonis from the Transifex Customer Success team.

The locales are now live and available in Transifex!

image
image306×160 6.13 KB

If you don’t see them when you first search, you might need to click “Show all languages” first.

Please let me know if everything works as expected, and if you need further assistance, we’ll be happy to help.

Kind regards,
Antonis

1 Like
8

Thank you for adding them! I requested them, so now I guess I have to ask the project (ODK) to add them… thanks a lot!

9

Hey @acesuares,

You are very welcome!

Yes, you must now request that the locales be included in your project.

Have a great day and an amazing start to your week! If you need anything else please don’t hesitate to let us know.