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Tamil month-name display

  1. vidhaanam
    Member

    Hi,

    I have observed an issue with the 'Tamil-language's month display' in WordPress tamil blogs.
    Month names in WP Tamil blogs were sometimes back displayed as a transliterated form of English month names (e.g. June --> ஜூன்[choon]).
    I guess, this has recently been changed. The current displayed names are Tamil’s own unique month names rather than English-transliterated form. Displaying Tamil month names is absolutely fine. But the real issue here is with the date displayed.
    English months cannot be directly associated with Tamil months. The actual tamil&English month association is as given below:

    1. Tai mid-January to mid-February
    2. Māci mid-February to mid-March
    3. Paṅkuni mid-March to mid-April
    4. Cittirai mid-April to mid-May
    5. Vaikāci mid-May to mid-June
    6. Āni mid-June to mid-July
    7. Āṭi mid-July to mid-August
    8. Āvaṇi mid-August to mid-September
    9. Puraṭṭāci mid-September to mid-October
    10. Aippaci mid-October to mid-November
    11. Kārttikai mid-November to mid-December
    12. Mārkazhi mid-December to mid-January

    The current WP month association is one-to-one (Tai to January, Māci to February and so on). This leads to a wrong Tamil date display.

    For example, ‘July 26th’ of this year falls under ‘Āṭi 11th’ in Tamil. But, it is currently displayed as ‘Āṭi 26th’ because of the one-to-one month association.

    If Tamil month names are used, the date should be displayed according to the Tamil date range. Otherwise, the previous version is fine (transliterated form of English names).

    sorry for such a long query.
    Thanks in advance,
    vidhaanam.

    The blog I need help with is vidhaanam.wordpress.com.

  2. vidhaanam
    Member

    since month details are bit Clumsy above, i am giving it again

    1. Tai - mid-January to mid-February
    2. Māci - mid-February to mid-March
    3. Paṅkuni - mid-March to mid-April
    4. Cittirai - mid-April to mid-May
    5. Vaikāci - mid-May to mid-June
    6. Āni - mid-June to mid-July
    7. Āṭi - mid-July to mid-August
    8. Āvaṇi - mid-August to mid-September
    9. Puraṭṭāci - mid-September to mid-October
    10. Aippaci - mid-October to mid-November
    11. Kārttikai - mid-November to mid-December
    12. Mārkazhi - mid-December to mid-January

  3. jenia
    Happiness Engineer

    It would probably be simplest to stick to the universal date format and change the translations to the English abbreviations. I've asked @oorodi who is a validator for Tamil to comment on this thread.

  4. oorodi
    Member

    Even though what you have mentioned is correct, it is very common that people are using the tamil month names directly in place of English ones.

    The self hosted version i have been validating for a while, is using the month names like this for a while now and have never received a complain on this.

    Now i am not sure on how to proceed here. Let me know your thoughts.

    Bage.

  5. mayooresan
    Member

    As I remember there was a discussion in Tamil wikipedia and people decided to stick with transliterated version.

    I hope Ravi can provide his insight on this.

  6. ravidreams
    Member

    I agree with Vidhaanam's suggestion. The Tamil Calendar follows a timeline different from Gregorian calendar.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamil_calendar

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregorian_calendar

    Though the Tamil month names are used as a literal translation for Gregorian month names in SriLanka, it is interpretted differently in Tamilnadu (India) based on Tamil Calendar.

    For example, the Tamil date in Tamilnadu today is Aadi 32 whereas it is called as Aadi 16 in SriLanka.

    Refer:

    http://www.tamildailycalendar.com/tamil_daily_calendar.php

    So, we should stick to transliterating Gregorian month names and not translate them inappropriately.

    This issue came up in Tamil Wikipedia and we took the same stand there too.

    This issue should also be fixed in the self-hosted version.

  7. oorodi
    Member

    I think i should change the month names back to transliterating format. But in the self hosted version, as I am validating Tamil(Sri Lanka) only, i will still keep the translated format. Because in Sri Lanka, even though we use the tamil dates for special occasions, we commonly use the translated version.

    With this issue I feel that, I may not be the best person to validate the tamil version of the wordpress.com unless there is a Tamil(Sri Lanka) version.

    So if there is anyone willing to do the validation, please contact @jenia

    Bage.

  8. jenia
    Happiness Engineer

    Thank you everyone for your input!

    @oorodi, so on a self-hosted version, if someone wants to publish a blog with a date July 26th, will it show up for them as ‘Āṭi 11th’ or as ‘Āṭi 26th’? Does the publisher adjust the published date manually? How does it impact comments? I appreciate your input on this! I think it's terrific that we have a Tamil version of WordPress.com going, and the date question is a rather small part of it, so I'm sure we can work out something that works for the majority of Tamil users.

  9. oorodi
    Member

    Hello @jenia,

    Thank you Ravi and Mayooresan for faster responses for my email.

    I am actually the validator for Tamil(Sri Lanka). There are two versions of Tamil in self hosted version. Tamil one is inactive and the Tamil(Sri Lanka) is very active.

    In that version the month names are translated not transliterated. In our case today is "Aavani 16". (Ravi confused Aati with Aavani). For Indian Tamils it is Aati 32. As long as anyone fron Sri Lanka have issus with this date format, It will be kept as it is.

    For the Tamil WordPress.com I will make sure to change the month names into transliterated formats.

    I am also very keen in having a WordPress.com Tamil version, I am sending Ravi and Mayooresan an email asking them to be part of validation process. ==(They were both the validators couple of years ago.)

    Thanking you
    Bage.

  10. jenia
    Happiness Engineer

    Bage, thank you for the detailed answer. This sounds like a good plan.

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