Localisation

Welsh CLDR

default_projectLocalization includes not only translating the text of software interfaces but also converting units of time, currency, abbreviations etc. Together with volunteers such as Eleri James and companies such as Google, the LTU has helped develop the Unicode Consortium’s CLDR (Common Locale Data Repository) standard international resource. Other collaborative on-line systems are used and there is much discussion and voting before every update of the Welsh CLDR. The Welsh CLDR is used to help localize software not only for  Google, but also Apple (e.g. Welsh names for the months in  iOS) and Microsoft. This is used as well as a resource by the open source community to localize products such as LibreOffice and Firefox. The Welsh version is constantly updated and improved. Although the data is released as stable versions (the latest is ’43’ ) it is possible to see the most recent version by volunteers and the Unicode Consortium here :

https://www.unicode.org/cldr/charts/43/summary/cy.html

Welsh Plural Rules

Some software packages use rules to allow effective localisation of strings that contain plurals. The CLDR contains information about how plurals operate in Welsh.

http://www.unicode.org/cldr/charts/latest/supplemental/language_plural_rules.html#cy

These rules work in the vast majority of cases, but not in all situations such as for ‘blwyddyn’ (year) as the following table demonstrates:

Unicode %n %n minute(s) %n year(s)
zero 0 0 munud 0 blwyddyn
one 1 1 munud 1 flwyddyn
two 2 2 funud 2 flynedd
many 3
6
3 munud
6 munud
3 blynedd
6 blynedd
few 4 4 munud 4 blynedd
other 5
7
ac ati
5 munud
7 munud
5 mlynedd
7 mlynedd