Localization of Countries

[radhavallabh]

Hi;
I must have overlooked this topic, until it was just brought to my notice so apologies for my delayed inputs.
But I really think we should stick to the Standard names of countries instead of native languages..
As many countries have multiple languages so that may pose an issue on choosing which language to use instead of English as the native language,
For example though Hindi is India's native language but it generally spoken and understood in North, Central, Western parts of India only. The regional languages take priority in most of the other states.
Even Switzerland has 4 native official languages, Like Indonesia also has many...etc.
And if we write countries with different names than common English ones it is possible that international customer may not notice that it may be listed in his/her native language name and may just leave thinking that we do not ship to his/her country.
Hence I really think we should not put this change to our countries list.
I may be wrong so its up to the Core team if they would consider as they have better insight on this.

Regds./
radhavallabh

[ecartz]

I don't think we're going to change the policy in general. We might reconsider how it applies to India, where India was and remains an official name of the country. It's not clear to me which is more prevalent inside India or if one is more recognizable than the other. If you have sources on that, feel free to post them.

It's also worth noting that if you don't like this particular change, it's possible to edit country names in admin. Changing the country ID or short versions would be problematic. Changing the name is harmless.

Most countries have one official name. India is unusual in having two and having a population large enough that different regions may prefer one or the other.

[burt]

This is not set in stone. This discussion helps inform us to make better decisions, I wish the whole community would be more open to helping out with future changes, even just having a say.

Do you feel that India is better named as India ?
As an Indian national, you are best placed to inform us on this.

[radhavallabh]

This is not set in stone. This discussion helps inform us to make better decisions, I wish the whole community would be more open to helping out with future changes, even just having a say.

Do you feel that India is better named as India ?
As an Indian national, you are best placed to inform us on this.

Yes indeed as till date Bharat is not used as a country name in any of our internet related websites, ecommerce or even govt. websites in English language,
भारत word is used only in those websites that are displayed in Hindi language only.
So I would suggest to keep it as India only.

Warm Regds./
radhavallabh

[radhavallabh]

I don't think we're going to change the policy in general. We might reconsider how it applies to India, where India was and remains an official name of the country. It's not clear to me which is more prevalent inside India or if one is more recognizable than the other. If you have sources on that, feel free to post them.

It's also worth noting that if you don't like this particular change, it's possible to edit country names in admin. Changing the country ID or short versions would be problematic. Changing the name is harmless.

Most countries have one official name. India is unusual in having two and having a population large enough that different regions may prefer one or the other.

According to me India is more prevalent now in English even within the country.

Sure dear, I would prefer retain the table from the 1.1.0.1 so that no name change edit shall be required specifically, as I prefer that list without diacritics as they are easy to read for most customers.

Very Warm Regds./
radhavallabh

[mhsuffolk]

Looking at the country lists in Amazon and ebay, both of which appear to know what they are doing when it comes to selling, they both use English variants of country names.
Perhaps we are over thinking this and breaking something that is not broken.

[Kofod95]

In Denmark, the most common thing is to have all countries in their own names or in Danish. A few have a combination (fx "Danmark (Denmark)", "Deutschland (Germany)")

If we want a "please all" solution, we should probably have two columns for country names and a new table holding country names for each installed language. Then offer a configuration of which to show. This seems to be a bit much...

//Daniel

[ecartz]

I've been considering the possibility of supporting a COUNTRY_LIST translation variable. Then if a store wants to translate countries, it could. However, it would have to translate all of them that people didn't want to appear in the default.

Code: Select all

const COUNTRY_LIST = [
  '1' => 'Afghanistan',
  '2' => 'Albania',
  '3' => 'Algeria',
];

Code: Select all

        'countries_name' => defined('COUNTRY_LIST') ? (COUNTRY_LIST[$country_id] ?? $countries_values['countries_name']) : $countries_values['countries_name'],

That could appear in includes/languages/english/system/versioned/1.0.8.6/country.php if someone wanted to add it.

I suspect that would be easier than trying to add a countries_description table.

[Dan Cole]

Perhaps we are over thinking this and breaking something that is not broken.

I tend to agree.

Dan