Database for Software List - Languages

[Robert Hopcroft <hopcroft@uswest.net>]

In http://www.seul.org/archives/seul/edu/Sep-1999/msg00285.html, I
wrote:
"Language (ability to select software based on available interface
language such as English, French, Chinese,etc.). Do we need to make a
list of all potential languages?"

I did a little looking in the archives and came up with the following:
In http://www.seul.org/archives/seul/edu/Dec-1998/msg00350.html, Roman
wrote:
"Each translation team has its own mailing list, courtesy of Linux
International.  You may reach your translation team at the address
`LL@li.org', replacing LL by the two-letter ISO 639 code for your
language.  Language codes are *not* the same as the country codes given
in ISO 3166.  The following translation teams exist, as of February
1997:

     Arabic `ar', Chinese `zh', Czech `cs', Danish `da', Dutch `nl',
     English `en', Esperanto `eo', Finnish `fi', French `fr', German
     `de', Greek `el', Hebrew `he', Hungarian `hu', Irish `ga', Italian
     `it', Indonesian `id', Japanese `ja', Korean `ko', Latin `la',
     Norwegian `no', Persian `fa', Polish `pl', Portuguese `pt',
     Russian `ru', Slovenian `sl', Spanish `es', Swedish `sv', Telugu
     `te', Turkish `tr' and Ukrainian `uk'."

In http://www.seul.org/archives/seul/edu/Dec-1998/msg00311.html, Barret
wrote:
"I would like to set a site where one can access the following
information:

       Suggestions for programmers on how to help the translator.
Example: it is generally assumed that a good translation of an app. is
to replace english
       with x language. This is quite frustrating to us, at least in
Asia, because we would like to replace English with English and x
language.
       What programs have local versions.
       The quality of the above mentioned translation and programming.
       The site would be arranged language-wise. That is you could look
at what is available in x-language rather than what languages x program
can
       support."
and in http://www.seul.org/archives/seul/edu/Dec-1998/msg00413.html,
Barret wrote:
"Would this work with non-european languages such as Chinese or
Japanese.
Example: All Chinese "words" have one syllable. One then combines these
words into groups to make a meaning. Example: dong, east + shi, west =
thing. The reason why I say this is to show that Chinese works quite
different from languages we are used to. Furthermore, each word is a
picture. Formatting changes from Spanish to English are quite easy.
Formatting changes from English to Chinese are not. Example: An English
based Access Database may or may not work in Chinese because of
formatting
difficulties.

If anyone is interested in how Chinese could be integrated in such a way

that it would not have formatting problems or require the operator to
know
what English the translator is guessing I would be much obliged."

I would like to see this database effort be a template for future
database projects.
All help in making this project a success is greatly appreciated.

Bob