File: gettext.info,  Node: Dialects,  Next: Translating plural forms,  Prev: Responsibilities,  Up: Translators

13.3 Language dialects
======================

   For many languages, a translation into the main dialect is
intelligible by all speakers of the language.  Speakers of another
dialect can have a separate translation if they wish so.  In fact, since
the fallback mechanism implemented in GNU libc and GNU libintl applies
on a per-message basis, the message catalog for the dialect needs only
to contain the translations that differ from those in the main language.

   For example, French speakers in Canada (that is, users in the locale
‘fr_CA’) can use and do accept translations produced by French speakers
in France (typical file name: ‘fr.po’).  Nevertheless, the translation
system with PO files enables them to produce special message catalogs
(file name: ‘fr_CA.po’) that will take priority over ‘fr.po’ for users
in that locale.  Similarly for users in Austria, where message catalogs
‘de_AT.po’ take priority over the catalogs named ‘de.po’ that reflect
German as spoken in Germany.

   The situation is different for Chinese, though: Since users in the
People's Republic of China and in Singapore want translations with
Simplified Chinese characters, whereas Chinese users in other
territories (such as Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macao) want translations
with Traditional Chinese characters, no translator should ever submit a
file named ‘zh.po’.  Instead, there will typically be two separate
translation teams: a team that produces translations with Simplified
Chinese characters (file name ‘zh_CN.po’) and a team that produces
translations with Traditional Chinese characters (file name ‘zh_TW.po’).