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Does moment library support translation of time zone abbreviations like EST, IST etc


Does moment library support translation of time zone abbreviations like EST, IST etc. Do these time zone abbreviations have different translation/wordings in different countries.


Solution

  • A few things:

    • Moment, by itself, cannot give you time zone abbreviations at all.

    • The moment-timezone add-on can give you abbreviations that exist in the IANA time zone database. I demonstrate that here.

    • The time zone database contains only one set of abbreviations for each time zone. Typically they are English representations only - however there are some that could be interpreted as being in English or in another language, such as MSK (used in Moscow, Russia).

    • Time zone abbreviations are sometimes ambiguous (CST = Central Standard Time [US] or China Standard Time), and sometimes there are multiple valid abbreviations (Hawaii = HST or HAST).

    • In some cases, an abbreviation does not exist at all, so the IANA time zone database will just give a number. For example, Europe/Minsk just has "+03" as the current abbreviation in the tz database.

    So in general, the answer is no.

    However, if you turn to the CLDR, you will find that a few time zones have non-English abbreviations. For example, there are French abbreviations for Canadian time zones (since they speak both English and French in Canada):

    en_US
    ------------------------------------
    PST = Pacific Standard Time
    PDT = Pacific Daylight Time
    MST = Mountain Standard Time
    MDT = Mountain Daylight Time
    CST = Central Standard Time
    CDT = Central Daylight Time
    EST = Eastern Standard Time
    EDT = Eastern Daylight Time
    
    fr_CA
    ------------------------------------
    HNP = heure normale du Pacifique
    HAP = heure avancée du Pacifique
    HNR = heure normale des Rocheuses
    HAR = heure avancée des Rocheuses
    HNC = heure normale du Centre
    HAC = heure avancée du Centre
    HNE = heure normale de l’Est
    HAE = heure avancée de l’Est
    

    I'm not even sure if the French abbreviations are actually used in reality.

    Outside of French Canada, you won't find many authoritative sources of translated time zone abbreviations anywhere. If you do, I'm very interested, but in general - the concept of time zone abbreviations reflects a very Western and English way of thinking about the world. My advice would be to avoid them if at all possible.