[jsword-devel] Chinese, traditional vs simplified

[DM Smith]

I have just checked in simplified Chinese translation for Bible  
Desktop (BD) and JSword. Chang provided zh_TW.properties files, which  
I saved as is and also as zh.properties (i.e. the default for Chinese)  
I have also added Chinese as a translation choice in Options/ 
Preferences. In doing this, I have made the list of supported  
translations a simple text file, called translations.txt.

I'm don't know Chinese (even though my son, Brad, is learning Mandarin  
and his wife, Sandy,  is Chinese from Taiwan), but I am vaguely aware  
that there are two forms of Chinese script: Traditional and  
simplified. And that there are some variations of the traditional  
script (e.g. Hong Kong) And also that Cantonese is different from  
Mandarin. And that there are other dialects too.

I may have misunderstood, but I am under the impression that the  
script is fairly unifying across the different Chinese languages/ 
dialects. That is if one person, speaking Cantonese, cannot understand  
another speaking Mandarin, that one writing Cantonese can understand  
another writing Mandarin as they would write it the same way but would  
read it differently.

I would like some help to correct my understanding where it falls  
short or is just plain wrong. I think we need to figure out how one  
would provide both a traditional and a simplified translation of BD  
and how one would provide a way to choose between them.

Currently in BibleDesktop we obtain a translation one of two ways.  
Either we take the default, which is based upon the user's locale,  
consisting of language and of country. The second way is to go into  
Options (called Preferences on the Mac) and choose a language. At the  
moment we don't support choosing a country.

In His Service,
	DM Smith