Little confusion about language names

i just created my account to want to translate IDeditor for OSM. but on transifex there are three languages with the name Punjabi or Panjabi these are - Panjabi (Punjabi) pa, Panjabi (Punjabi) (India) (pa_IN) and Panjabi (Pakistan) (pa_PK). I’m a native speaker of Punjabi or sometimes written as Panjabi and there are two different scripts used to write this language - Gurmukhi (in India) and Shahmukhi (in Pakistan). the language code for Punjabi (Gurmukhi) is ‘Pa’ and for Punjabi (Shahmukhi) is Pnb. But i don’t know how three different codes are there on transifex.

Hello @Kuldeepburjbhalaike,

I am Antonis from the Transifex Customer Success team.

Thank you for bringing this up! Let me clarify the different Punjabi language codes:

  1. ‘pa’ - This is the standard ISO 639-1 code for Punjabi (primarily associated with Gurmukhi script)
  2. ‘pa_IN’ - This is a locale-specific code for Punjabi as used in India
  3. ‘pnb’ - This is the ISO 639-3 code that specifically represents Western Punjabi, written in Shahmukhi script and commonly used in Pakistan.

For IDeditor OSM translations, there should be different teams for each locale, and you can request to join the team for whichever one you want to contribute towards.

I hope this helps!

hi @Mylon
thanks for the clarification but i don’t understand the need of ‘pa_IN’ if it is the same punjabi ¶ that is written in Gurmukhi script and covers Indian Punjab.

Hello @Kuldeepburjbhalaike,

The ‘pa_IN’ code exists due to locale-specific formatting needs, even though it represents the same language and script as ‘pa’. The ‘_IN’ suffix can affect things like:

  • Date formats (DD/MM/YYYY vs MM/DD/YYYY)
  • Number formats (use of commas, decimals)
  • Currency symbols (₹)
  • Other regional formatting preferences

So, while translating the actual language might be the same in both locales, other conventions might differ. Transifex doesn’t control which locales each organization uses, but we are happy to provide them if they find them necessary. Each organization uses the locales that best suit their needs, and they’re not mandatory.

I hope this helps.

@Mylon, Yes, it makes sense to have a locale on a region basis. In that case, ‘pa_IN’ (Punjabi as spoken in India) should fall back to ‘pa’ (Punjabi in general), right?

Hello @Kuldeepburjbhalaike,

While your assumption makes sense, which locale is used as a fallback in the actual software falls outside the scope of Transifex since our platform is responsible for localizing those strings.

If you have any specific questions about how these translations will be used, why those locales were selected, or whether they are used as a fallback, please feel free to contact someone from this project’s localization team. They would be the right people to answer these questions.

I hope this helps!

Ah np, appreciate you help:)

1 Like