FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions)

A. Beginning with CLDR 22, the new guidance is that names of items such as languages, regions, calendar and collation types, as well as names of months and weekdays in calendar data, should be capitalized as appropriate for the middle of body text. For more information, see the Capitalization section in the Translation Guidelines.

A. You need to remove "(other)" or the equivalent from language names. In general, you should avoid using parentheses in the names of languages, scripts, or regions if at all possible. There is more information about this in the zoomed view.

A. There is permanent detail box which is visible on the right hand side. When any data cell is clicked, the detail box provides a comment about the purpose of the item (and details on errors or warnings).  To get details on the voting and approval status, as well as details on errors, click on the status icon: , , , , or .

A. For CLDR 22, the performance of the Survey Tool has been greatly improved compared to previous versions. It may still occasionally be slow if many people are active at the same time, after updates to the code or data, or when re-running tests over other data items that may be affected by certain changes.

We ask your patience when this happens. If it is preventing you from doing your work, please sent a message to cldr-users@unicode.org (CLDR Users).

A. The "en" locale, and certain items such as exemplar characters in all locales, are read-only and cannot be changed via the Survey Tool. To request a change in these items, file a ticket.

A. You basically want to get multiple organizations to agree on the best value. For details on the voting process, see Resolution Procedure.

A. References for non-supplemental values are no longer supported.

A. The Unicode CLDR data uses inheritance. That means that if you are looking at English (United Kingdom) (a "sublocale") most of the data is inherited from English (which contains data for the US), called the "parent locale". Such data will show up as red. You only need to have different data in the sublocale where there are important differences in usage from the parent locale.

Data in a sublocale may be spuriously different; that is, the parent's data may be perfectly acceptable in the sublocale, but somehow a difference has crept in. In that case, you should vote for the parent's data to reduce the gratuitous differences.

A. If there is no other translation available, what you will see is a "neutral" code, typically an ISO code. In cases where there is no such code available, such as for labels like "Month", then you may see English -- which needs to be translated.

A. You can only delete an item if you yourself have entered it, and there are no other votes. Click on the "Abstain" button for that row. To remove a spurious difference in a sublocale, vote for the red fallback item.

A. It doesn't really matter much. What is really important is to make sure the the right item is voted for; so try to get consensus as described above. If all the alternatives are really wrong, and you really don't know what the right item would be, vote for the red fallback item.

A. Everyone can add data to "Unknown or Invalid Language" (und), so you can try out the Survey tool there without worry.

A. You should click on the items you have questions about, and read the information towards the bottom of the page.

In many cases, even seemingly straightforward translations like the language, script, and territory names have issues. For example, these may have been direct translations from ISO standards, which are quite often not the best ones names for computer interfaces.

If you have further questions, or problems with the Survey Tool, send a message to cldr-users@unicode.org.

1. Please tick the 'Keep me logged in' button when logging in.
2. If you have completed entering old votes, click the 'Do not ask again' button when prompted.

Updates

• See Latest Updates for information on recent changes to the behavior and operation of the Survey Tool.