Opinion needed from Portuguese users

Should we adopt the new spelling charter that requires the same spelling applied in every Portuguese-speaking country?

Recently, the person responsible for translating the Graphene theme into Portuguese (pt_PT) has brought to our attention about the controversy regarding the charter for spelling with new rules. As we were informed, the charter was intended to have the same spelling applied in every Portuguese-speaking country, and was to take effect in 2012.

We are aware that although newspapers and institutions have to use it, its adoption is far from universal. We are also aware that a lot of academics have disputed the agreement for a myriad of reasons. Some countries like Brazil have postponed its implementation until 2016, while Angola and Mozambique are ignoring it altogether.

The Portuguese translation (pt_PT) that we currently have do not conform to the new spelling rules, but we intend to update that so that it conforms with the new spelling rules.

As a community that provides WordPress themes solutions to international audience, we are not in position to dictate to speakers of any language how they’d like to use their language, nor do we intend to. Which is why we are asking for your opinion regarding this matter, so that if anyone should decide, it should be the speakers of the language themselves.

Our current stand is that we will update the language files for European Portuguese (pt_PT) to conform to the new rules. We can also easily make the old language files available for anyone to use, but those won’t be maintained (unless someone volunteers to maintain them).

Please note that this only concerns the pt_PT variant of the Portuguese language. WordPress recognizes another standard, pt_BR which is Brazilian Portuguese. These two, even if the spelling becomes more or less identical, will never be equal because of language usage and because IT technical words are different.

So let us know your thoughts and suggestions regarding this issue. You can either using the comment form below or by contacting us directly.

Update – 4 May 2013

Lengthy discussions have taken place between the Graphene theme’s Portuguese translator, Paulo Monteiro, and the group responsible for maintaining the Portuguese translation of WordPress core. A poll has also been called to determine the group’s preference for which direction to take regarding the new spelling charter for the Portuguese language.

The results of these discussions and poll can be summarised as the group is not yet ready to migrate to and implement the new spelling charter for the Portuguese language. For consistency and in the spirit of the open source community, we have decided to forgo our original intention to update the theme’s Portuguese translation to reflect the new spelling charter.

This decision will be in effect until such time that the group is ready to move forward with and implement the new spelling charter.