Problem
Time formats seem to vary inconsistently between languages.
- When language is set to UK English, 24-hour time incorrectly has no leading zero
- When language is set to Croatian, 12-hour time incorrectly has a leading zero
Across all languages, time formats are displayed arbitrarily differently, unrelated to the conventions of the language it is set to.
For example:
Spanish (Spain): '2:30 p. m.'
Spanish (Latin America): '2:30 p.m.'
With Time Format set to '24-hour';
Language set to 'English':
image
Language set to 'English (US)':
image
Dates are inconsistent too. For example, Croatian has a space between the day, month and the year.
(Perhaps this is LLM localisation weirdness?)
Proposed solution
Don't localise times. Apply a consistent format across languages.
- 24-hour should have leading zeros and a colon as the separator.
- 12-hour should not have leading zeros and should have a colon as a separator, with 'AM' and 'PM'.
It also makes sense to give users the option of switching between DD/MM/YYYY, YYYY/MM/DD and MM/DD/YYYY independent of language.
As human localisations come in, formats can be properly localised. For example, using Japanese kanji in the date format (2023年12月31日).
1 comment
Comment by Rex