Localisation resources

Localization includes not only translating the text of software interfaces but also converting units of time, currency, abbreviations etc.

Welsh CLDR

Together with volunteers such as Eleri James and companies such as Google, the LTU has helped develop the Unicode Consortium’s CLDR (Common Locale Data Repository) standard international resource. Other collaborative on-line systems are used and there is much discussion and voting before every update of the Welsh CLDR. The Welsh CLDR is used to help localize software not only for  Google, but also Apple (e.g. Welsh names for the months in  iOS) and Microsoft. This is used as well as a resource by the open source community to localize products such as LibreOffice and Firefox. The Welsh version is constantly updated and improved. Although the data is released as stable versions (the latest is ’43’ ) it is possible to see the most recent version by volunteers and the Unicode Consortium here. 

 

 

Plural rules

Some software packages use rules to allow effective localisation of strings that contain plurals.

The information about the plurals in Welsh within the CLDR (http://www.unicode.org/cldr/charts/latest/supplemental/language_plural_rules.html#cy) works for many situations but not for ‘blwyddyn’ (year). The table below shows this:

 

Unicode %n %n minute(s) %n year(s)
zero 0 0 munud 0 blwyddyn
one 1 1 munud 1 flwyddyn
two 2 2 funud 2 flynedd
many 3
6
3 munud
6 munud
3 blynedd
6 blynedd
few 4 4 munud 4 blynedd
other 5
7
ac ati
5 munud
7 munud
5 mlynedd
7 mlynedd