What is the best way to represent Middle Earth using Java's Locale framework?

Question

I'm in the process of putting together an android app which will have a Quenya translation out of the box (an Elvish dialect).

If we would like to maintain the maximum compliance with the ISO standards while representing this fantasy world, how should we go about it?

Also, if there is a standard for representing Middle Earth that has already been agreed on by the community, what is it?

Perhaps we would: require more letters for the language or country codes (like "TME" for "Tolkien's Middle Earth" or "MEGN" for "Middle Earth, Gondor")

Answer 1

I am not clear if there are community-agreed standard for such country code yet.

However, for your suggestion of "more letter for language or country code", that will surely be a bad idea. ISO standard already defined how many characters a country / language code can be. For example ISO 3166-1 alpha-3 standard is 3-char long country code while ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 is 2-char long.

I think you best bet is to choose code that is not used by any country, or choose from some deleted codes so that there is supposed no one using or going to use it. (For example, MID is a deleted code which looks a good fit for Middle Earth grin )

Answer 2

Quenya has already been registered in iso 639-3 with the code "qya" : http://www-01.sil.org/iso639-3/documentation.asp?id=qya