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

[Christian Perrier]

Constitution française, article II "De la souveraineté" :

"La langue de la République est le français. "

Should we then change the name of "FR" in iso-codes to "Français"? I
guess you'll say "no" and you'll be right.

The standard is a standard for names of languages *in the English
language*.

And, indeed, when I read the text of the Bangladesh constituion in
English (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_Bangladesh), it
reads "The state language is Bengali".

I guess that the original text is in Bengali and probably says "The
state language is Bangla". This is perfectly fine, of course.

We can also find many governmental resources in Bangladesh that use
"Bengali" in their *English* pages. For instance:
http://www.bangladesh.gov.bd/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=116&Itemid=190

What's confusing here is that most Indic languages are also used in a
transcripted manner, so people reading a list of languages think they
should read the transcription of the language name....while they're
reading the name of the language in English.

I don't want to hurt my friends in Bangladesh, but, really, the original
statement in this bug report is incorrect. And I would be very very very
deeply sorry if Ubuntu patches iso-codes this way. Also, please think
that doing so you're opening a big giant can of worms. You'll very
quickly end up in political fights, either with language names or (more
likely) with country names.

I am maintaining iso-codes for 8 years now....and the only solution I
found to avoid this is to stick to the standard. Strictly.

If people want things to be changed, then they have to make the standard
changed.

Another reference :
http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=ben. Ethnologue is a
highly recognized resource when it comes at languages (indeed, SIL
International, who maintains the site, is also the maintainer of the ISO
639-3 standard). Here, again, we have "Bengali" (Bangla appears in
alternate names, admitedly, but we really can't add alternate names in
lists.....and, anyway, they are not maintained in the standard).

So, really really, don't patch iso-codes in Ubuntu.

By the way, I renamed bn_IN.po to bn.po. This should be effective in the
next release of iso-codes, due out November 1st (assuming Tobias
Quatamer uses his usual schedule)

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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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