Mixing english and japanese in DB?

rubyonrails-talk
1

This is an interesting localisation problem.

Obviously technical stuff: store everything in the database as UTF-8 and you are covered (well its not that simple but thats the basics). That way the user can enter custom information for flooring types that are japanese-only, or you can offer it as a choice in a drop down or whatever.

Note that Globalise AFAIK assumes that you pick a dominant language and stick to it. Translation is in effect unidirectional. (Someone correct me on this if I am wrong). For the 'english reference' I would just romanize it: 'tatami' or 'tatami (japanese floormats)'.

I am curious though, is tatami in this sense, just a flooring type?

In the same sense, that a user may have wooden, hard-wood, carpeted, tiled, stone, linoleum, or PVC flooring etc. Or is it a unit of measurement (like a 4-tatami room)?

I know that tatami have a uniform size and are as a consequence used as a unit of room *size* measurement, in the same way that we might otherwise use square metres or square feet.

If thats the case, I wouldn't try unit conversions between tatami and sq/m,sq/ft.

2

Richard Conroy wrote:

I am curious though, is tatami in this sense, just a flooring type?

In the same sense, that a user may have wooden, hard-wood, carpeted, tiled, stone, linoleum, or PVC flooring etc. Or is it a unit of measurement (like a 4-tatami room)?

I know that tatami have a uniform size and are as a consequence used as a unit of room *size* measurement, in the same way that we might otherwise use square metres or square feet.

If thats the case, I wouldn't try unit conversions between tatami and sq/m,sq/ft.

No one answered this, but I think it's the latter. In Japan, it is common to measure the size of a room in terms of tatami units..

Cheers Mohit.