ICU 77 updates to CLDR 47 (beta blog ) locale data with new locales, and various additions and corrections.

• Download: releases/tag/release-77-1

• Maven: com.ibm.icu / icu4j / version 77.1

ICU 77 is mostly focused on bug fixes, segmentation conformance, and other refinements.

The Java technology preview implementation of the CLDR MessageFormat 2.0 specification has been updated to incorporate the CLDR 46.1 spec plus most but not all of the CLDR 47 changes.

The C++ technology preview implementation of MessageFormat 2.0 is not yet quite up to date with CLDR 46.1.

Please note that for ICU 78 (2025-oct) we are planning to (a) upgrade from Java 8 to Java 11, and (b) remove the ICU4J Locale Service Provider . See the ICU 77 page for details.

Unicode CLDR 47 Release: MessageFormat 2.0 Stable

The Unicode CLDR project provides key building blocks for software to support the world's languages (dates, times, numbers, sort-order, etc.). For example, all major browsers and all modern mobile phones use CLDR for language support. (See Who uses CLDR? )

Key changes in CLDR 47

CLDR 47 did not have a Survey Tool submission phase , and focused on tooling and just a few functional areas. The biggest change is that the MessageFormat 2.0 specification has advanced from Final Candidate to Stable. This means that the stability guarantees are in place and implementations can finalize their APIs.

MessageFormat 2.0 Stable

Software needs to construct messages that incorporate various pieces of information. The complexities of the world's languages make this challenging. MessageFormat 2.0 enables developers and translators to create natural-sounding user interfaces that can appear in any language and support the needs of various cultures.

The new MessageFormat defines the data model, syntax, processing, and conformance requirements for the next generation of dynamic messages. It is intended for adoption by programming languages, software libraries, and software localization tooling. It enables the integration of internationalization APIs (such as date or number formats) and grammatical matching (such as plurals or genders). It is extensible, allowing software developers to create formatting or message selection logic that add on to the core capabilities. Its data model provides the means of representing existing syntaxes, thus enabling gradual adoption by users of older formatting systems.

Tech Preview implementations are available in C++, Java, and JavaScript:

• ICU4J, Java:com.ibm.icu.message2 , part of ICU 76, is a tech preview implementation of the MessageFormat 2.0, together with a formatting API. See the ICU User Guide for examples and a quickstart guide, and Trying MF 2.0 Final Candidate to try a “Hello World”.

• ICU4C, C++:icu::message2::MessageFormatter , part of ICU 76, is a tech preview implementation of MessageFormat 2.0, together with a formatting API. See the ICU User Guide for examples and a quickstart guide, and Trying MF 2.0 Final Candidate to try a “Hello World”.

• Javascript:messageformat 4.0 provides a formatter and conversion tools for the MessageFormat 2 syntax, together with a polyfill of the runtime API proposed for ECMA-402.

(Because of the timing, these implement a slightly earlier version of the spec, but can be used for initial evaluation, testing, and experimentation.)

See also:

• UTW 2024 {�} MessageFormat v2 (October 2024)

• Message Format Virtual Open House (February 2024)

Tooling changes

Many tooling changes are difficult to accommodate in a data-submission release, including performance work and UI improvements. The changes in CLDR 47 provide faster turn-around for linguists and higher data quality. They are targeted at the CLDR 48 submission period , starting in April 2025.

For more information

See the CLDR 47 release page , which has information on accessing the data, reviewing charts of the changes, and — importantly — Migration issues.

Implementation Guidance

Vendor support for a new currency symbol can involve many different things, such as the following:

• Updates to fonts

• Updates to software keyboard layouts or new designs for physical keyboards

• APIs for formatting currency values

• Generation of financial statements and reports

• Updates to applications, online services or devices for commercial transactions

Next steps

Extending support with CLDR

instead of

Later, when there is confidence that the symbol is more widely supported in fonts, a future CLDR version will change currency formatting to make the format with the Saudi riyal symbol the default, rather than an alternative.

People wishing to start using the new symbol in applications and services should anticipate that it could take several months or, in some cases, even years for vendors to implement and distribute product updates.

Working together to support the new Saudi riyal symbol

📅 Dates: November 11-13

✈️ Nearest Airports: San Francisco International (SFO) or San Jose International (SJC)

Join us in person for three days of community building around the Unicode technology that makes software work for billions of people. Expect workshops, seminars, free-form discussions, and lightning talks centered around i18n libraries, locale data frameworks, globalization tooling, localization pipelines, input methods, and text rendering. Network with the developers and users to help shape the future of Unicode technology.

Expect to come away with deeper knowledge on how to solve tough problems in the i18n and l10n space and how to engineer products that work better for global users. To encourage maximum collaboration amongst the attendees, this is an in-person-only event.

New for 2025!

November 11th will be a pre conference day with tutorials and training for those who want to learn new or refresh their skills.

Become a UTW Sponsor

Sponsorship opportunities are also available, with discounts for Unicode organizational members.

What’s Next?

The call for submissions along with registration information will be available later this month. Space is limited, so please watch your inbox for further information.

If you have any questions in the meantime, please contact us at events@unicode.org .

The Unicode CLDR 47 Alpha is now available for integration testing. 

CLDR provides key building blocks for software to support the world's languages (dates, times, numbers, sort-order, etc.) For example, all major browsers and all modern mobile phones use CLDR for language support. (See Who uses CLDR ?)

Via the online Survey Tool, contributors supply data for their languages — data that is widely used to support much of the world’s software. This data is also a factor in determining which languages are supported on mobile phones and computer operating systems.

The alpha has already been integrated into the development version of ICU. We would especially appreciate feedback from non-ICU consumers of CLDR data and on Migration issues . Feedback can be filed at CLDR Tickets .

CLDR 47 focused on MessageFormat 2.0 and tooling for an expansion of DDL support. It was a closed cycle: locale data changes were limited to bug fixes and the addition of new locales, mostly regional variants.

RBNF improvements and Transforms

CLDR added Gujarati RBNF support, which provides number spell out functionality, and made improvements to many other languages .

Transforms were also improved in both CLDR 46.1 and 47 releases which included:

• Adding a Hant-Latn transliterator

• Aliasing Hans-Latn to Hani-Latn

• Improvements to several other transliterators

More regional variants

Over the past few years there have been an increasing number of requests for locales to be added to languages, such as English, when they are commonly used in a region as a lingua franca.

CLDR has been adding additional child locales to support these requests and has begun restructuring inheritance to allow for better maintenance of shared regional data, such as currency symbols and metazone names.

46.1 Improvements

CLDR 46.1 was a special interim release of CLDR that focused on MessageFormat 2.0. It included a few additional changes:

• More explicit well-formedness and validity constraints for unit of measurement identifiers

• Addition of derived emoji annotations that were missing: emoji with skin tones facing right

• Fixes to make the ja, ko, yue, zh datetimeSkeletons useful for generating the standard patterns

• Improved date/time test data

For more information, see 46.1 Changes

Tooling changes

Many tooling changes are difficult to accommodate in a data-submission release, including performance work and UI improvements. The changes in CLDR 47 provide faster turn-around for linguists, and higher data quality. They are targeted at the CLDR 48 submission period, starting in April, 2025.

For more information

See the draft CLDR v47 Release Note , which has information on accessing the data, reviewing charts of the changes, and — importantly — Migration issues.