en-GB versus en-US

[mb000000]

VM 2.0.16

I feel I'm about to re-open an old wound, but here goes....

The default English translation VM provides is with the language "en-GB" (as opposed to en-US).  However, all the "translated" text refers to "Shipment" / "Shipping"/ "Shipped"/ "Ships" / "Ship" when these do not really suit use for en-GB (but would be fine for en-US, I assume), when they should be (respectively) "Delivery" / "Delivery" / "Dispatched" / "Dispatches" / "Deliver".  I am aware that with J1.7 and later, I could use overides to cater for this, but from a purist standpoint, surely en-GB should be appropriate for English (as opposed to American)?  I have just done a simple straw poll of several major UK on-line retailers (e.g. Amazon.co.uk, BT, Marks & Spencer, Play.com, Next.co.uk,.....) and they all use Delivery / Dispatch in the way I outlined above rather than Shipment / Shipping.  In fact, the argument should also be extended to "Bill" / "Billing" / etc to become "Invoice" / "Invoicing" / etc.

I would welcome comments on this from both sides of the camp - those that agree with me (i.e. change the default VM en-GB text to use Deliver* & Invoic*) and those that disagree.

Obviously, I would be happy to provide the updated .ini files if there were agreement on this change.  Perhaps this would also be accompanied by renaming the current en-GB*.ini to en-US*.ini?

Mark
(Yes, I am British, but I think you might have guessed that by now)

[jjk]

I could eventually change that (although i.e. the Oxford dictionary doesn't say i.e. 'Billing' or 'Shipping' is american English only), but I'll watch any replies to your post for a while. At present we have only ONE 'unified' english language pack and most Americans and Britains seem to be happy with that. If we make the source language files strictly British, I suppose we need a few VM2 users volunteering to supply and maintain strictly american language files version first.

BTW - VM2 is primarily being developed by german and french developers. 

[mb000000]

Yes, I was aware that VM is developed by non-native English speakers and my posting was by no means a criticism of the translations as they are at the moment - my French and German are "schoolboy" at best, sufficing to order beers and not much more (I'm not proud of this, it's just a reflection of how I chose to spend my time at the age when learning a foreign language was easiest for me - I try to make amend nowadays learning some of the local language of my travel destinations).

I accept that the dictionary definitions may not make a specific reference to Billing and Shipping being American, but in en-GB, my own experience is that Billing used by Brits refers more to charges made for professional services, such as lawyers, consultants and the like, whereas the purchase of goods or packaged services would normally be referred to as Invoicing (depending on the context and formallity of the parties involved, but even so, Billing would not naturally be used by Brits when referring to the purchase of goods). 

Shipping in Britain refers to the movement of ships, so is a valid word but with quite a different meaning to "the process of delivering remotely ordered products"!  However, I accept that many (perhaps most) Brits know that "Shipping" in the context of web ordering refers to Delivery - in the same way those same users would know that ZIP refers to a UK postcode, Automobile refers to a Car and so on.  In both cases (Shipping and ZIP), I would say there are a significant percentage of Brits that would NOT expect a website targetted at UK customers to use the en-US terms (they would infer that the supplier is American and that may put off the customer because of perceived customer service issues or increased delivery charges / complexity from USA to UK or simply a lack of local sensitivity).

In addition to the major UK retailer sites I looked at, I did come across at least one VM based one that had also replaced Billing and Shipping with Invoicing and Delivery.  Even Amazon's UK site does something similar, reflecting awareness by a US organisation of the difference between American and English as they are actually used. 

As you say, perhaps wait to see if other people feel as I do (hence my expressing the original post as I did).

Mark

[lindapowers]

I guess is quite similar to the spanish & south american (latin) issue.

The problem is that many people join the incorrect transifex language team (transifex coordinators fault) or at first versions there was nobody then to make translations and people helped in their free time.

Don't get me wrong, really appreciate the free and hard work by those guys but now we have like 40 people in the spanish team for example and half are not even from Spain.

en-GB should be done by British people doing the "correct" en-GB translation as es-ES should be of Spanish from Spain not from Mexico and Argentina.

And of course en-US and mexicans and other south american countries have their own language clearly divided in Joomla.

You can join the transifex team or just make the corrections for yourself.

In my case I was so pissed  that I joined the Spanish team and made the translation to "international and traditional" spanish in every file.

Lots of fun