German and Swiss

On Transifex someone has requested some changes to the de_DE language pack. It seems that we are running into some differences in the German language spoken in Germany, Switzerland and Austria.

Off course there is always the option to use language overrides, but my personal preference would be to set up different languages. This avoids having to make similar adjustments by the majority of users that want to use either variety of the language.

e.g:
January = Januar = Jänner ?
Street = Straße = Strasse ?

So I propose to split between de_DE and de_CH for now.
Any comments? Jojo maybe?

With Dutch being my native language, I do realise that at some point we might want to split into Dutch and Flemish as well....

I wouldn't do it, it makes no sense (speaking from my background of a Swiss guy living in Germany (already 13 years))

Why not:
1) It would be double/triple language maintenance work, and already now in the de_DE files are many inconsistencies and minor errors.
2) As far as I know there is no Joomla language pack for de_AT and de_CH (or am I wrong).
3) Every Swiss and Austrian user understands the "normal" or standard German (maybe they don't like it, but that is an other question).

I would rather suggest to open one or tww new threads here "language override for Swiss" and "language override for Austrians", where everyone can contribute to an override file for Swiss and Austrian users. So everybody can download it, improve it, add new overrides and offer the updated version again here ...

Hi Hekla,

Thank you for your insights.
Overrides are impossible to host on Transifex unfortunately.

The example I was given this afternoon:

The translation #86 in [ADMIN] com_jem.ini is:ERROR:
Add street // FEHLER: Strasse hinzufügen.
The correct translation for "street" is not "Strasse " for de_DE, that would be the correct translation for de_CH. In de_DE it has to be "Straße", as the "sharp s" after a long vowel has to be "ß", only after short vowels, it's written "ss".

I do not have to maintain the language files, but I'm sure we have more than enough German and Swiss speakers to do this

Hi ernst67

I meant, that overrides files can be uploaded to the forum, e.g. as zipped text files and we will see how they develop.

Yes, Swiss people do not use the ß, but they have no problem understanding it. Many books in Switzerland are printed in Germany and use ß.
So, "Straße" it not very Swiss indeed, but I think overrides will do the job for them who want the ss

I can imagine – as soon as the German language files are somehow "correct enough" – to read them trough once a filter out all the stuff, which is not Swiss enough and put it in an override file ...
Just remind me

And to maintain a language file of high quality, it needs more than to translate a bit form time to time.
It needs an overview over the vocabulary, expressions used in the rest of the translation and how recurring phrases are formulated. Otherwise you get a wild mixture … An often the length of the phrases have to fit too.

I for example spent one whole day to create the JEM language files in Germany I want (so I myself have tons of overrides)

Hi Hekla,

I agree with your remarks about the consistency of a translation. It's more than just translating some strings.

I don't see any advantage in maintaining an overrride file in a forum compared to maintaining a language on a dedicated platform. Ans users just want to download a language, without diving deep into the forum to find out if there are any adjustments. on the languages.

As a matter of fact: We have about 27500 users on this forum, but more than 120.000 downloads of the component. So there is only a very small portion of the component users that actually have a forum account.

I'm sorry, but so far I'm still in favour of creating a dedicated language. Just a matter of cloning de_DE into de_Ch and adapting the strings.
I understand the differences may be small between the languages, but I'm just looking for the best manageable solution.

EDIT:
And as it's my task to manage the translations, I'm looking for the most efficient way to do that

ernst67 wrote: I don't see any advantage in maintaining an overrride file in a forum compared to maintaining a language on a dedicated platform. Ans users just want to download a language, without diving deep into the forum to find out if there are any adjustments. on the languages.

I still think maintaining an override file is definitely easier, because you have a fully functional (de_DE) version as base, there is no hurry and it is an "inofficial user project".
But I agree with you finding the override file is probably quite difficult for "normal" users ...

And still, there is no de_CH for Joomla (see update1.joomla.org/language/translationlist_3.xml ) and I haven't seen one Joomla Extension with de_CH ...
And with this I actually don't know how to tell JEM to use de_CH instead of de_DE ?