Re: Abbreviations

WC means restroom in Germany, too, 00 (2 zeros, pronounced Null-Null) is 
also commonly used. 

I would leave the abbreviations in the resource bundles and add their 
precise meaning as a comment so that localizers can figure out what to do 
with them. Not many countries use abbreviations as heavily as the US do, 
which really screws up real estate and layout, especially in tables. Often 
just shortening the word is used to abbreviate, not just one letter. 
German Restaurant ---> Rest. but Wartezimmer (waiting room) is often seen 
as Wz. in older train stations or doctor's offices.

Be prepared that you might not be able to use abbreviations in certain 
languages. And it is definitely a bad idea to hard code them and maybe 
offend somebody in a different language.

David Possin





"Boza, Gladys (Gladys)" <boza@avaya.com>
Sent by: www-international-request@w3.org
11/15/01 02:12 PM

 
        To:     <www-international@w3.org>
        cc: 
        Subject:        Abbreviations


HI, 
I'm working on internationalizing our Java application. We are using 
resource bundles to extract all the localizable text. couple of questions 
came up:
For now, we don't translate the name of our product due to marketing 
issues. Since we are developing a wireless application we are forced to 
use abbreviations of our product names due to the limited real state.
For example:  AWC, for All Wireless Center 
* Does this abbreviation have a strong meaning attached in countries like 
Germany, France, Brazil, Lat America or Italy? like WC has it in France 
(means toilet)
* If this abbreviations or product names are not translated, should I take 
them out of the resource bundle and hard code them? Or should I leave them 
in the resource bundle? The likelihood of translating these names in the 
near future is very low, probably lower than the likelihood of translators 
translating them by mistake.
Any ideas, suggestion will be very much appreciated. 
Thanks 
Gladys