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> A lot of times the translation would sound like how Chinese is used in China instead. Ignorant person here (sorry if I'm asking a dumb question), but given t

by Aachen 3y ago

> A lot of times the translation would sound like how Chinese is used in China instead. Ignorant person here (sorry if I'm asking a dumb question), but given the larger population of China to Taiwan, why is that not the correct thing to do? Or is this "Traditional Chinese" a language spoken only in Taiwan? When translating to Dutch, I wouldn't expect it to output Dutch as it is spoken in Belgium, Suriname, or Limburg either; I'd expect it to output Dutch as the main body of speakers speak it. They should get their own language designation instead, if the software wants to support translating into variants of the language

junon 3y ago
> given the larger population of China to Taiwan Taiwan is its own country. India has a similar population to China. Why not just translate into Urdu or Tamil instead, by that logic?
- Aachen 3y ago
  Please read the rest of the comment. I was assuming that what is called "Traditional Chinese" is used in China, based on its name (Chinese) and that GTranslate outputs it. Urdu and Tamil aren't spoken in China and isn't what GTranslate outputs when you select a Chinese language, afaik
  - Y_Y 3y ago
    Bear in mind that Taiwan (the country) also calls itself China, and so did the rest of the world until the seventies.
    - Aachen 3y ago
      What do people living in Taiwan call the 'other' China? Is "mainland China" a correct thing to say, or is the word "main" there implying that Taiwan is lesser and not an equal/peer state? I used the word China in other comments because I didn't know what to call it otherwise, hoping that in the context of Taiwan it is clear what I mean
      - naniwaduni 3y ago
        "Mainland" means "continental" in general; the other context it comes up in is "mainland Europe". The term is ... not completely uncontentious in its own right, but mostly on the "assumes the other China is another China" dimension.
        Aachen 3y ago
        I'm not sure what the last part means about the other China being another China, but continental sounds like a good alternative actually. No concept of main versus spare/alternate/lesser, just not an island
        4cao 3y ago
        Yes, but the island of Hainan is considered part of "Mainland China," while the mainland areas of Hong Kong and Macau are not, so in this context it's a purely political term, trying to shape reality as opposed to just describing it.
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
      - 4cao 3y ago
        大陸 /dàlù/ 'mainland' is used but often pejoratively. It's a politically charged issue as this article from a pro-KMT newspaper can attest: https://www.chinatimes.com/newspapers/20180520000567-260109 https://www.chinatimes.com/newspapers/20180520000567-260109 對岸 /duì àn/ 'opposite [side of the Taiwan] Strait' is a neutral term coined specifically to avoid the controversy. If talking about politics, another neutral way could be to just say 北京 /Běijīng/.
        deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
      - komali2 3y ago
        They call it 中國 "Middle Country," or "Middle State" or "Middle Kingdom," (bear in mind that the meaning 國 "guo" has changed over time) the name for the territory and empires encompassing basically the current territory of the PRC since the Western Zhou dynasty. Under no circumstances is Taiwan every seriously referred to as "China," not even "Republic of China," the official name in the constitution, is really used anymore. The passports now prominently say "Taiwan," and polling indicates that "Chinese" identity in Taiwan is dying swiftly with the settler colonialist KMT. The sibling comment may be referring to political discussions between politicians, especially when talking with PRC officials. I'm not sure, I've almost never heard those terms used except by really weird super-KMT taxi drivers. The parent comment that "Taiwan calls itself China" is simply incorrect, and the government mentioned, in the 70s, was a KMT totalitarian government that's been essentially overthrown as of the 90s. It's a pointed issue that you'll often find heated responses from because Taiwan, for basically the first time in its history as a globally participant nation, is finally getting to establish its own identity, separate from the Dutch, the Qing, the Japanese, and the ROC/KMT settler-colonialists. There's great fear that the CPC, having failed to win a culture war here with han chauvinism / han supremacy, will simply resort to violence to imperialise the nation.
    - komali2 3y ago
      Taiwan absolutely does not call itself China. At best the government that holds sovereignty in Taiwan is called the Republic of China, and yet daily everyone calls the country itself "Taiwan," and in fact even the passports were recently changed to say "Taiwan" in enormous letters to remove any confusion about what the people want. The government would change its name to also be Taiwan, or maybe Republic of Taiwan or something like that, but it can't do so without changing the constitution, which Xi Jinping has threatened to invade immediately if this occurs. So it's both incorrect and disingenuous to say "Taiwan calls itself China."
      - Y_Y 3y ago
        But the constitution does say it. And so does Tsai Ing-wen: > “We don’t have a need to declare ourselves an independent state,” Tsai told the BBC. “We are an independent country already and we call ourselves the Republic of China, Taiwan.”[0] So it's not factually incorrect. Of course the issue is fraught and just saying "the country on Formosa is called the Republic of China" would be completely deceptive, but nobody is doing that. Talk about Chinese politics is always heated but I don't appreciate being accused of being disingenuous. [0] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jan/15/tsai-ing-wen-says-china-must-face-reality-of-taiwans-independence https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jan/15/tsai-ing-wen-s...
        komali2 3y ago
        "Republic of China" is a dramatically different name than "China." To claim that both the PRC and Taiwan call themselves the same name is to muddy the waters and contribute to the PRC's cultural imperialism through linguistic mechanism. Furthermore, though Tsai Ing-Wen is the president of the RoC, as I said, there's a rising independence movement separate from the settler-colonial government of the RoC. Among these people, and the majority of Taiwanese, Taiwan is "Taiwan," and "RoC" is at best a formality, at worse an unchosen government underwritten by an unchangeable constitution. The new passport illustrates the point decisively: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/66/Republic_of_China_(Taiwan)_Passport_2020.svg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/66/Republic... If you're unintentionally muddying the waters that's one thing, but I react strongly because I strongly oppose anybody that assists the PRC's cultural imperialism.
  - Danieru 3y ago
    > "Traditional Chinese" is used in China It is not. Traditional Chinese is not used in mainland china. It was superceded by simplified Chinese in areas controlled by the Chinese communist party. This is a rather basic piece of knowledge when discussing Taiwan and Chinese relations.
  - junon 3y ago
    ... The exact point being that Taiwan by and large does not use simplified Chinese. They are different countries. They speak effectively different languages.
    - hewlett 3y ago
      effectively different languages? no, both the mainland and Taiwan both speak Mandarin, although with distinctive slang and accents. I grew up learning simplified and I can guess a lot of traditional characters reasonably well, although I hear going from traditional -> simplified is much harder
- DiogenesKynikos 3y ago
  I don't think your point is relevant here. They speak the same language in China and Taiwan: Mandarin Chinese. The question is whether to use more Taiwanese-sounding phrases when traditional characters are requested.
  - OJFord 3y ago
    A very similar (just more technical/less known) point that's pretty close would be enforcing Sanskritised Hindi written in devanagari on anyone trying to use Persian-influenced words or Urdu. (Or vice versa.) This seems purely political and obviously divisive: Taiwan (& HK) has its own history and China doesn't want it to.
raincole 3y ago
> Or is this "traditional Chinese" a language spoken It's not a spoken language. It's only for written text. > only in Taiwan? Only in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and oversea Taiwanese/HK communities.
- Aachen 3y ago
  Thanks. So essentially the site is saying that Google Translate outputs what I'd call (for simplicity) Taiwanese/Hong Hongese with a foreigner's "accent" (but in writing)? It sounds odd to me. If China doesn't speak Traditional Chinese, why would GTranslate output text with China's usage patterns
  - raincole 3y ago
    > So essentially the site is saying that Google Translate outputs what I'd call (for simplicity) Taiwanese/Hong Hongese with a foreigner's "accent" (but in writing)? It sounds odd to me. Taiwanese is another language... but let's use your simplified terms for now. Well, yes, pretty much this. It's not that different from writting "fish and chips" as "fish and fries" in British English.
  - goblin89 3y ago
    Be on the lookout for misinformation obscuring the fact that Cantonese (a.k.a. Yue), spoken in Hong Kong, is a language. It’s not mutually intelligible with Mandarin (unlike, say, Mandarin spoken in Taiwan, which is more or less Mandarin with a different accent and slightly different vocabulary) or other languages of Chinese family. Cantonese uses different transliteration systems as well (Pinyin doesn’t work for it). Who’s mainly responsible for there to this day being no ISO standard for transliterating Cantonese, and its conspicuous absence from Google Translate (despite the whopping 86 million speakers—consider that Translate supports, say, Welsh, Basque, Dhivehi, and many others that are spoken by fewer than even one million), is probably obvious. That entity is much helped by the issue being opaque to most foreigners, who are sufficiently baffled by a completely different writing system to just not care and bundle all languages written in Chinese script into one basket.
rjzzleep 3y ago
I don't think the downvotes are fully justified and I think it's a valid point to make. Taiwan itself for example for the longest time had an extremely unintuitive local pinyin version. They are at least no longer as strict in enforcing it versus the now official one that came from the Mainland. It is sometimes the cause for going the wrong place in Uber trips. However, it is worth noting that there was basically an iron curtain between China and Taiwan for a long time after Chiang Kai-shek went there. A lot of IT terminology for example developed separately in Taiwan and China, so a lot of technical terms are different. The following website lets you look up scientific terms and convert them between china mainland and taiwenese. https://terms.naer.edu.tw/ https://terms.naer.edu.tw/
- Aachen 3y ago
  Based on a sibling comment from raincole, Traditional Chinese isn't used in China at all. Shouldn't the translator then simply output the Taiwanese (and, according to them, Hong Kongese) variants when selecting that language, rather than the language having two possible words to use?
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
DiogenesKynikos 3y ago
"Traditional characters" and "Simplified characters" are writing systems, not languages. You can write many variants of Chinese with either system. Traditional characters are still used in Taiwan and Hong Kong, while simplified characters are standard on the mainland and in Singapore. However, traditional characters are still used in some niche cases on the mainland (such as decorations, names of shops and restaurants). Whether a translation to "Traditional characters" should default to Taiwanese-flavored Mandarin is an open question.
- etmmte 3y ago
  If the locale code says zh-TW then it should translate to Taiwanese-flavored Mandarin for sure.
divbzero 3y ago
British vs. American English seems like a good analogy given that they also have distinct language codes. Would Google translate camión to lorry vs. truck depending on en-GB vs. en-US?
SeanLuke 3y ago
Chinese generally has two writing systems: traditional and simplified. In the 1950s to 1980s mainland China developed simplified chinese in a bid to make the language easier to write. Note that these are just different ways of writing the same characters: think cursive versus block. They are not different languages -- the vocabulary and grammar can be identical. Traditional Chinese is used in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, Singapore, and to one degree or another in various Chinese immigrant communities around the world. Taiwan is obviously the 800 pound gorilla here. Taiwan has come to develop its own style of written Chinese -- think US vs British English but more nationalistic. So the question is: when Google Translate converts to traditional characters should it also be translating into Taiwan's written patois [not to be confused with the Taiwanese dialect]? After all, Google Translate does not differentiate between Britain and the US in English (it sadly uses British). And there are other groups which use traditional without this patois (Hong Kong, say, though likely not for long), albeit in fewer numbers. The author does have one really good point, and that is that Google Translate is mistakenly describing traditional as zh-TW, that is "traditional as used in Taiwan". As long as it insists on doing that, it should also be translating into Taiwan's written patois. But what it should be doing instead is describing traditional as zh-Hant.
- quenix 3y ago
  > After all, Google Translate does not differentiate between Britain and the US in English (it sadly uses British). I'm a bit confused—can you think of some examples where GT would default to British English translations over American English?
  - SeanLuke 3y ago
    It varies. Italian("Uso l'acensore") -> "I use the lift" Italian("Provo l'acensore") -> I try the elevator"
- globular-toast 3y ago
  > Google Translate does not differentiate between Britain and the US in English (it sadly uses British). Wrong way around? I just checked and it seems to use American (sadly).
shawabawa3 3y ago
> Ignorant person here (sorry if I'm asking a dumb question), but given the larger population of China to Taiwan, why is that not the correct thing to do? Or is this "Traditional Chinese" a language spoken only in Taiwan? They addressed this: > NOTE: The Google Translate menu only says "Chinese (Traditional)". However, if you pick the option, you will see the language code reflected in the URL is zh-TW, which means "Traditional Chinese as being used in Taiwan". The alternative option for Google to fix this problem is to officially drop zh-TW support and switch to an appropriate language code instead, such as zh-Hant.
- sorz 3y ago
  The whole post is on base on the fact that "TW" in their URL. But I think this is really just a internal implementation detail of Google Translate, which is not intended to display to users (e.g. complete hidden on their app). Everywhere on their UI shows "Chinese (Traditional)". That is what they try to communicate with users. Sure, zh-TW is somewhat misleading. But they nor say that parameter is a ISO 639 or RFC 5646 conformed.

by Aachen 3y ago

junon 3y ago

> given the larger population of China to Taiwan Taiwan is its own country. India has a similar population to China. Why not just translate into Urdu or Tamil instead, by that logic?

Aachen 3y ago
Please read the rest of the comment. I was assuming that what is called "Traditional Chinese" is used in China, based on its name (Chinese) and that GTranslate outputs it. Urdu and Tamil aren't spoken in China and isn't what GTranslate outputs when you select a Chinese language, afaik
- Y_Y 3y ago
  Bear in mind that Taiwan (the country) also calls itself China, and so did the rest of the world until the seventies.
  - Aachen 3y ago
    What do people living in Taiwan call the 'other' China? Is "mainland China" a correct thing to say, or is the word "main" there implying that Taiwan is lesser and not an equal/peer state? I used the word China in other comments because I didn't know what to call it otherwise, hoping that in the context of Taiwan it is clear what I mean
    - naniwaduni 3y ago
      "Mainland" means "continental" in general; the other context it comes up in is "mainland Europe". The term is ... not completely uncontentious in its own right, but mostly on the "assumes the other China is another China" dimension.
      - Aachen 3y ago
        I'm not sure what the last part means about the other China being another China, but continental sounds like a good alternative actually. No concept of main versus spare/alternate/lesser, just not an island
        4cao 3y ago
        Yes, but the island of Hainan is considered part of "Mainland China," while the mainland areas of Hong Kong and Macau are not, so in this context it's a purely political term, trying to shape reality as opposed to just describing it.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - 4cao 3y ago
      大陸 /dàlù/ 'mainland' is used but often pejoratively. It's a politically charged issue as this article from a pro-KMT newspaper can attest: https://www.chinatimes.com/newspapers/20180520000567-260109 https://www.chinatimes.com/newspapers/20180520000567-260109 對岸 /duì àn/ 'opposite [side of the Taiwan] Strait' is a neutral term coined specifically to avoid the controversy. If talking about politics, another neutral way could be to just say 北京 /Běijīng/.
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
    - komali2 3y ago
      They call it 中國 "Middle Country," or "Middle State" or "Middle Kingdom," (bear in mind that the meaning 國 "guo" has changed over time) the name for the territory and empires encompassing basically the current territory of the PRC since the Western Zhou dynasty. Under no circumstances is Taiwan every seriously referred to as "China," not even "Republic of China," the official name in the constitution, is really used anymore. The passports now prominently say "Taiwan," and polling indicates that "Chinese" identity in Taiwan is dying swiftly with the settler colonialist KMT. The sibling comment may be referring to political discussions between politicians, especially when talking with PRC officials. I'm not sure, I've almost never heard those terms used except by really weird super-KMT taxi drivers. The parent comment that "Taiwan calls itself China" is simply incorrect, and the government mentioned, in the 70s, was a KMT totalitarian government that's been essentially overthrown as of the 90s. It's a pointed issue that you'll often find heated responses from because Taiwan, for basically the first time in its history as a globally participant nation, is finally getting to establish its own identity, separate from the Dutch, the Qing, the Japanese, and the ROC/KMT settler-colonialists. There's great fear that the CPC, having failed to win a culture war here with han chauvinism / han supremacy, will simply resort to violence to imperialise the nation.
  - komali2 3y ago
    Taiwan absolutely does not call itself China. At best the government that holds sovereignty in Taiwan is called the Republic of China, and yet daily everyone calls the country itself "Taiwan," and in fact even the passports were recently changed to say "Taiwan" in enormous letters to remove any confusion about what the people want. The government would change its name to also be Taiwan, or maybe Republic of Taiwan or something like that, but it can't do so without changing the constitution, which Xi Jinping has threatened to invade immediately if this occurs. So it's both incorrect and disingenuous to say "Taiwan calls itself China."
    - Y_Y 3y ago
      But the constitution does say it. And so does Tsai Ing-wen: > “We don’t have a need to declare ourselves an independent state,” Tsai told the BBC. “We are an independent country already and we call ourselves the Republic of China, Taiwan.”[0] So it's not factually incorrect. Of course the issue is fraught and just saying "the country on Formosa is called the Republic of China" would be completely deceptive, but nobody is doing that. Talk about Chinese politics is always heated but I don't appreciate being accused of being disingenuous. [0] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jan/15/tsai-ing-wen-says-china-must-face-reality-of-taiwans-independence https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jan/15/tsai-ing-wen-s...
      - komali2 3y ago
        "Republic of China" is a dramatically different name than "China." To claim that both the PRC and Taiwan call themselves the same name is to muddy the waters and contribute to the PRC's cultural imperialism through linguistic mechanism. Furthermore, though Tsai Ing-Wen is the president of the RoC, as I said, there's a rising independence movement separate from the settler-colonial government of the RoC. Among these people, and the majority of Taiwanese, Taiwan is "Taiwan," and "RoC" is at best a formality, at worse an unchosen government underwritten by an unchangeable constitution. The new passport illustrates the point decisively: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/66/Republic_of_China_(Taiwan)_Passport_2020.svg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/66/Republic... If you're unintentionally muddying the waters that's one thing, but I react strongly because I strongly oppose anybody that assists the PRC's cultural imperialism.
- Danieru 3y ago
  > "Traditional Chinese" is used in China It is not. Traditional Chinese is not used in mainland china. It was superceded by simplified Chinese in areas controlled by the Chinese communist party. This is a rather basic piece of knowledge when discussing Taiwan and Chinese relations.
- junon 3y ago
  ... The exact point being that Taiwan by and large does not use simplified Chinese. They are different countries. They speak effectively different languages.
  - hewlett 3y ago
    effectively different languages? no, both the mainland and Taiwan both speak Mandarin, although with distinctive slang and accents. I grew up learning simplified and I can guess a lot of traditional characters reasonably well, although I hear going from traditional -> simplified is much harder
DiogenesKynikos 3y ago
I don't think your point is relevant here. They speak the same language in China and Taiwan: Mandarin Chinese. The question is whether to use more Taiwanese-sounding phrases when traditional characters are requested.
- OJFord 3y ago
  A very similar (just more technical/less known) point that's pretty close would be enforcing Sanskritised Hindi written in devanagari on anyone trying to use Persian-influenced words or Urdu. (Or vice versa.) This seems purely political and obviously divisive: Taiwan (& HK) has its own history and China doesn't want it to.

raincole 3y ago

> Or is this "traditional Chinese" a language spoken It's not a spoken language. It's only for written text. > only in Taiwan? Only in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and oversea Taiwanese/HK communities.

Aachen 3y ago
Thanks. So essentially the site is saying that Google Translate outputs what I'd call (for simplicity) Taiwanese/Hong Hongese with a foreigner's "accent" (but in writing)? It sounds odd to me. If China doesn't speak Traditional Chinese, why would GTranslate output text with China's usage patterns
- raincole 3y ago
  > So essentially the site is saying that Google Translate outputs what I'd call (for simplicity) Taiwanese/Hong Hongese with a foreigner's "accent" (but in writing)? It sounds odd to me. Taiwanese is another language... but let's use your simplified terms for now. Well, yes, pretty much this. It's not that different from writting "fish and chips" as "fish and fries" in British English.
- goblin89 3y ago
  Be on the lookout for misinformation obscuring the fact that Cantonese (a.k.a. Yue), spoken in Hong Kong, is a language. It’s not mutually intelligible with Mandarin (unlike, say, Mandarin spoken in Taiwan, which is more or less Mandarin with a different accent and slightly different vocabulary) or other languages of Chinese family. Cantonese uses different transliteration systems as well (Pinyin doesn’t work for it). Who’s mainly responsible for there to this day being no ISO standard for transliterating Cantonese, and its conspicuous absence from Google Translate (despite the whopping 86 million speakers—consider that Translate supports, say, Welsh, Basque, Dhivehi, and many others that are spoken by fewer than even one million), is probably obvious. That entity is much helped by the issue being opaque to most foreigners, who are sufficiently baffled by a completely different writing system to just not care and bundle all languages written in Chinese script into one basket.

rjzzleep 3y ago

I don't think the downvotes are fully justified and I think it's a valid point to make. Taiwan itself for example for the longest time had an extremely unintuitive local pinyin version. They are at least no longer as strict in enforcing it versus the now official one that came from the Mainland. It is sometimes the cause for going the wrong place in Uber trips. However, it is worth noting that there was basically an iron curtain between China and Taiwan for a long time after Chiang Kai-shek went there. A lot of IT terminology for example developed separately in Taiwan and China, so a lot of technical terms are different. The following website lets you look up scientific terms and convert them between china mainland and taiwenese. https://terms.naer.edu.tw/ https://terms.naer.edu.tw/

Aachen 3y ago
Based on a sibling comment from raincole, Traditional Chinese isn't used in China at all. Shouldn't the translator then simply output the Taiwanese (and, according to them, Hong Kongese) variants when selecting that language, rather than the language having two possible words to use?
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

DiogenesKynikos 3y ago

"Traditional characters" and "Simplified characters" are writing systems, not languages. You can write many variants of Chinese with either system. Traditional characters are still used in Taiwan and Hong Kong, while simplified characters are standard on the mainland and in Singapore. However, traditional characters are still used in some niche cases on the mainland (such as decorations, names of shops and restaurants). Whether a translation to "Traditional characters" should default to Taiwanese-flavored Mandarin is an open question.

etmmte 3y ago
If the locale code says zh-TW then it should translate to Taiwanese-flavored Mandarin for sure.

divbzero 3y ago

British vs. American English seems like a good analogy given that they also have distinct language codes. Would Google translate camión to lorry vs. truck depending on en-GB vs. en-US?

SeanLuke 3y ago

Chinese generally has two writing systems: traditional and simplified. In the 1950s to 1980s mainland China developed simplified chinese in a bid to make the language easier to write. Note that these are just different ways of writing the same characters: think cursive versus block. They are not different languages -- the vocabulary and grammar can be identical. Traditional Chinese is used in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, Singapore, and to one degree or another in various Chinese immigrant communities around the world. Taiwan is obviously the 800 pound gorilla here. Taiwan has come to develop its own style of written Chinese -- think US vs British English but more nationalistic. So the question is: when Google Translate converts to traditional characters should it also be translating into Taiwan's written patois [not to be confused with the Taiwanese dialect]? After all, Google Translate does not differentiate between Britain and the US in English (it sadly uses British). And there are other groups which use traditional without this patois (Hong Kong, say, though likely not for long), albeit in fewer numbers. The author does have one really good point, and that is that Google Translate is mistakenly describing traditional as zh-TW, that is "traditional as used in Taiwan". As long as it insists on doing that, it should also be translating into Taiwan's written patois. But what it should be doing instead is describing traditional as zh-Hant.

quenix 3y ago
> After all, Google Translate does not differentiate between Britain and the US in English (it sadly uses British). I'm a bit confused—can you think of some examples where GT would default to British English translations over American English?
- SeanLuke 3y ago
  It varies. Italian("Uso l'acensore") -> "I use the lift" Italian("Provo l'acensore") -> I try the elevator"
globular-toast 3y ago
> Google Translate does not differentiate between Britain and the US in English (it sadly uses British). Wrong way around? I just checked and it seems to use American (sadly).

shawabawa3 3y ago

> Ignorant person here (sorry if I'm asking a dumb question), but given the larger population of China to Taiwan, why is that not the correct thing to do? Or is this "Traditional Chinese" a language spoken only in Taiwan? They addressed this: > NOTE: The Google Translate menu only says "Chinese (Traditional)". However, if you pick the option, you will see the language code reflected in the URL is zh-TW, which means "Traditional Chinese as being used in Taiwan". The alternative option for Google to fix this problem is to officially drop zh-TW support and switch to an appropriate language code instead, such as zh-Hant.

sorz 3y ago
The whole post is on base on the fact that "TW" in their URL. But I think this is really just a internal implementation detail of Google Translate, which is not intended to display to users (e.g. complete hidden on their app). Everywhere on their UI shows "Chinese (Traditional)". That is what they try to communicate with users. Sure, zh-TW is somewhat misleading. But they nor say that parameter is a ISO 639 or RFC 5646 conformed.