[Bug 991002] Re: Change name for bn-BD from 'Bengali(Bangladesh)' to 'Bangla(Bangladesh)')

[Gunnar Hjalmarsson]

Christian,

Maybe it's true that we are very badly informed; thanks for enlightening
us.

I do admit that keeping the iso-codes package in sync with applicable
standards sounds reasonable, at least from a formal POV. OTOH, making
exceptions, when details in the standards are apparently outdated, would
also make sense IMO.

As regards translations, maybe it would be a good idea if the
translation teams in Bangladesh and India cooperated on bn.po
translations, and that bn_IN.po was dropped. (There is no bn_IN language
pack in Ubuntu.) But even if that happened, and applied to the issue of
this bug report, what you suggest would require translations of Bengali
into (the local equivalent of) Bangla. Assuming that both Bangla and
Bengali are existing words in Bangla (and many other languages), doing
so would not be correct from a translation POV, I suppose.

I checked out whether nl_langinfo() may be of some help:

   $ cat test.c
   #include <stdio.h>
   #include <locale.h>
   #include <langinfo.h>

   main () {
      setlocale (LC_IDENTIFICATION, "bn_BD.UTF-8");
      char *lang_name = nl_langinfo (_NL_IDENTIFICATION_LANGUAGE);
      printf ("%s\n", lang_name);
   }

   $ ./test
   BengaliBangla
   $ 

Hmm.. Probably not.

IMO, at first hand this is about Ubuntu showing awareness of the fact
that the name of the language has been changed. Giving the opposite
impression is a bad idea. Making current and potential Ubuntu users, who
speak Bangla, happy is better. Bangla is one of the biggest languages in
the world
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_number_of_native_speakers).

I tend to think that we should acknowledge that things change, and that
approving the proposed merge proposal, at least in Ubuntu, is the better
option. While sending a note "upstream", i.e. to ISO, of course. ;-)

"The state language of the Republic is Bangla."

After all, that sentence in the constitution of Bangladesh, is a strong
argument.

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/991002

Title:
  Change name for bn-BD from 'Bengali(Bangladesh)' to
  'Bangla(Bangladesh)')

Status in “iso-codes” package in Ubuntu:
  In Progress
Status in “language-selector” package in Ubuntu:
  Invalid
Status in “localechooser” package in Ubuntu:
  New
Status in “iso-codes” package in Debian:
  Won't Fix

Bug description:
  The official name for the state language for Bangladesh is Bangla, as
  detailed on section 3, part 1 of the Bangladesh constitution
  (http://www1.umn.edu/humanrts/research/bangladesh-constitution.pdf).
  However, language selector continues to refer to this language as
  Bengali (Bangladeh). While Bengali has been historically used as the
  english name for the language during colonial periods, the name
  'Bangla' is more widely used nowadays. It is also the name with which
  native speakers identify the language.

  This package uses Bengali(Bangladesh) as the identifier for language
  code bn-BD. Please change the name to Bangla(Bangladesh).

  ProblemType: Bug
  DistroRelease: Ubuntu 12.04
  Package: language-selector-gnome 0.79
  ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.2.0-23.36-generic 3.2.14
  Uname: Linux 3.2.0-23-generic x86_64
  ApportVersion: 2.0.1-0ubuntu5
  Architecture: amd64
  Date: Sun Apr 29 16:14:25 2012
  PackageArchitecture: all
  ProcEnviron:
   LANGUAGE=bn_BD:bn:en_IN:en_GB:en
   PATH=(custom, no user)
   LANG=bn_BD.UTF-8
   SHELL=/bin/bash
  SourcePackage: language-selector
  UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to precise on 2012-03-19 (41 days ago)

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