Dear TypeDrawers,
where to find good typographic terminology in the world’s languages?
At Unicode, I help maintaining a localization database called Common Locale Data Repository (CLDR). For example, when you change the timezone of your computer, your computer will need a name for every timezone translated to your language. Collecting all those translations is painful. Therefore, these days most apps and operating systems are sharing some of their translations via Unicode CLDR.
Now, we’ve just added some typographic terminology to CLDR:
- labels for the registered OpenType design-variation axes, such as Weight, Slant, or Optical size;
- labels for typographic styles, such as Light, Book, Narrow, Back slanted, or Display;
- labels for typographic features, such as Old-style figures.
Future apps would still check out a font’s ‘name’ table for all these things, but if the font has no translation for the user’s language, the app could display translations from Unicode CLDR as a fallback. Modern systems work in about 80 to 100 languages or more, so it it would be unrealistic to expect every font to have every needed label in every language.
For seeding Unicode’s translation database, Adobe, Apple, Microsoft and Google have kindly contributed their existing translations and I’ve merged them. However, I believe the current translations still need improvement. For example, in German (my native language), most translations seem to have been entered by translators who’ve never worked in a print shop or graphic design studio; so I’ve cleaned up the German terminology by referring to a specialized site.
As TypeDrawers, you will probably know better than typical general translators how to call “Optical size”, “Back slanted” or “Old-style figures” in your languages. Can you tell me the correct typographic terminology? Either post it here, or send e-mail to sascha@unicode.org.
Many thanks,
— Sascha