Forum:English variant

I'm reopening the discussion on what variant of the English language to use. Looking back at the pitifully small discussion we actually had on this the rationale's that were used to pick UK English look dubious.

Prior discussions:
 * Narutopedia talk:Manual of Style
 * Forum:Spelling
 * Forum:Amaterasu correction
 * Talk:Mum's Red Hair

ShounenSuki's rationale for UK English was this: 
 * The USA is the only country major country in the world that uses US English.
 * British English is used, not only in the UK, but in (with minor variations) in Canada, Australia, Ireland, India, and many more countries. Hence why British English is also called International English.
 * Not only is British English used in the vast majority of English-speaking countries, it is also taught in the vast majority of non-English-speaking countries that teach English as a second language in any official manner. The European Union, Japan, and China, for instance.
 * This wiki caters to an international audience. Yes, the US makes up for a large portion of that audience, but that portion isn't even half of our entire readership. (In fact, if I remember correctly, it isn't even a quarter.)
 * Since we are a wiki that uses a Japanese series as the main source of its information and caters to an international audience, it makes no sense to use any other form of English besides British English.

Firstly, the assertion that British English is used in Canada, Australia, Ireland, etc... is bullshit. Every region has it's own variations. And some of those variations are as notable as the US <-> UK variations.

If you want to jump into the dictionaries and localization languages offered by software with me. The common ones (with varying consistency) listed (and have shown up in MediaWiki i18n discussions) are:
 * US English (en-US; sometimes fused together with the standard 'en' English locale)
 * British English (en-GB)
 * Canadian English (en-CA)
 * Australian English (en-AU)

((Side note, as far as MediaWiki goes; US English (en-US) is fused with the standard 'en' English locale (bug 31874). British English (en-GB) has been supported for awhile. I helped add Canadian English (en-CA) in 1.19. As for Australian English (en-AU) we have one or two speakers in the dev community but there's no-one in the translation community that has stepped up to translate the software.))

The extras I also see in dictionary lists (some of them) and language header lists:
 * Belizean English (en-BZ; Belize)
 * Irish English (en-IE; Ireland)
 * Jamaican English (en-JM; Jamaica)
 * New Zealand English (en-NZ; New Zealand)
 * Philippine English (en-PH; Philippines)
 * South African English (en-ZA; South Africa)
 * Trinidadian English (en-TT; Trinidad and Tobago)
 * (en-ZW; Zimbabwe)

So the idea that UK English is the be-all-end-all of English is bullshit. Just about every one of the changes that were made to the MediaWiki: messages in the name of translating them to en-GB (which btw was the wrong way to change the wiki's locale) was not part of Canadian English (en-CA). So the idea that we are catering to the majority of the world besides the US by switching to British English (en-GB) is bullshit, and in a way offensive too.

The idea that British English is "International English" too sounds dubious. There's no source for that claim. And when I tried to look up the topic of "International English" I came up with something completely different. It's much more likely that English in foreign languages varies by teacher and country-by-country with different countries' education organizations standardizing on different English variations on their own.

Secondly, none of the claims about audience have been backed up by proper stats. And country stats aren't even the proper stats for that. What we want is current stats about what languages users browsers are set to. This is exposed in the Accept-Language header on every pageview. eg: Mine is set to "en-ca,en;q=0.5". That combined with a little bit of cross referencing with the country stats is what we need for that kind of decision.

The last reason was just re-iteration referencing the flawed premise of the whole rationale. The Japanese part has nothing to do with the topic about what variant of English we use.

Lastly, this was all done without even taking into account the readers and watchers of Naruto. Our actual audience.

By that I mean; Viz distributes the Naruto manga in North America and the UK. And the English translation of the anime in as well (Manga Entertainment had the license for the first series in the UK it seems. But now Viz's translation of Shippuden is being broadcast nearly worldwide thanks to CR). Has anyone actually bothered to double-check what variant of English Viz translates the manga and anime into? And do they use one translation and distribute it worldwide? Or do they localize separately for the US and UK?

Because if our canonical English translation of Naruto is using US English and distributing US English to the UK or the US version is spread worldwide more than the UK version then that is enough of a rationale to pick US English.

~ Daniel Friesen (DanTMan, Nadir Seen Fire) (Local Talk &#8285; Animanga Talk) 06:55, October 28, 2012 (UTC)