pseudo-localization variants

[Michael Everson]

On 19 Dec 2012, at 16:50, Peter Constable <petercon at microsoft.com> wrote:

> When Microsoft uses pseudo-loc, AFAIK it's always English.

If it doesn't differ in any way from English, then it is English.

>> What *is* pseudo-localized text? How does it differ from Lorem ipsum?
> 
> I answered that in my original mail: it's text that is typically in the original development language for a product but in an orthography that exercises the localizability of that product.

By exhibiting a range of ad-hoc misspellings?

On 19 Dec 2012, at 17:01, Peter Constable <petercon at microsoft.com> wrote:

> I mentioned that MS uses the ISO 639 private use (“local code”) ‘qps’. There is nothing in BCP 47 that prevents such a private use subtag from being used in combination with a variant subtag.

Why do you need a subtag in addition to the private-use code? 

> There is no specific proposal yet. I raised the discussion with a view to a possible proposal. I think there should be some way to denote pseudo-loc content in a valid BCP 47 tag.

Why, if "pseudo-localization" content isn't any kind of stable entity?

> Currently, MS is using tags such as “qps-ploc” pr “qps-plocm”, neither of which are valid, but which can leak into the wild.

Why not just "qps"?

> (E.g., a user can add one of these in their language profile in Windows 8 and then create documents in which these might get used, or if they browse on the web they would be included in an http accept-language header.)

Why should a private-use scenario be of concern?

Michael Everson * http://www.evertype.com/