Here's a UK-ised version. (engb, en-gb)

Main changes:
authorise --> authorise
quit (verb) --> close

Andrew

What's the difference ? :?

Very good question

Okay. That'll teach me to ignore the preview screen!

Yes - "ize" spellings have been changed to "ise".

Okay. That'll teach me to ignore the preview screen!

Yes - "ize" spellings have been changed to "ise".

Given that both the -ize and -ise spellings are both OK for British english I don't really think that this is the problem.

The problems I see are:

1. Everything Is Capitalised And This Is Not The Usual Way We Do Things In English Is It? Capital letters go at the start of sentences and start proper nouns. Personally, being a picky proof-reader, I would change all the wording to the correct case.

(Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, Douglas Adams).

2. There are some phrases that are Americanisms and we have Britishisms to match (see a fanstatic book called "British English A to Zed"). Thus, I would make:

#5 Mute (the word "microphone" is redundant)
#6 Put call on hold
#7 Engaged
#52 Call length
#65 You cannot call yourself
#70 End call
#181 County
#242 Date of birth (we use this phrase as it used on Birth Certificates, and is also abbreviated to DoB)
#246 County

#247 Town or city (cities in the UK have that status conferred by the crown, not just because it's a big town. Tiny Wells is a city; huge Blackpool, Colchester, Croydon, Doncaster, Dover, Guildford, Ipswich, Luton, Maidstone, Medway, Middlesbrough, Milton Keynes, Northampton, Reading, Shrewsbury and Atcham, Southend-on-Sea, Stockport, Swindon, Telford, Warrington and Wirral are not)

#325 Send engaged tone to %s
#399 Date of birth
#449 End call
#459 End call
#467 County
#468 Town or city
#547 All calls will be ended. Continue?
#637 Date of birth
#668 Mute
#669 Remove mute
#872 Exit Skype?
#873 Exit Skype?
#901 Call is on hold
#902 Call is on hold
#1007 The Skype Name you entered is not valid!

The word "quit" is British english is used when people leave a job, it is not used as a synomym for "exit". British english speakers don't clearly see the subtle difference between "Quit" "Cancel" "Stop" "Exit" and "Close".

We also call pronounce the zero digit in telephone numbers as "oh", and we use the "n-double-n" rhymic format rather than "tripple-n". So (020) 7446 0002 is read:

oh-two-oh seven double-four six oh-double-oh two.

We call busy "engaged" and it's a "tone" not a signal. Signals are the things that direct railway trains (not cars, those are traffic lights).

Finally, I would replace the words "Instant Message" with "Text message". All UK mobile telephone handsets (which 90%+ of the population have, including kids) have SMS text messageing, and millions of messages are sent each day this way. If you are going to use the telephone metaphor for Skybe, the words "Text message" would be more suitable for the British.

Excellent program, Skybe, BTW

Also "office phone" would proably be better as the more general "work phone" - not everyone works in an office. :!:

While we are at it. We often see the 50 US states as a drop-down list, here are the UK counties as an alternative.

ENGLAND is a COUNTRY

It has counties called

Bedfordshire
Berkshire
Buckinghamshire
Cambridgeshire
Cheshire
Cornwall
Cumberland
Derbyshire
Devon
Dorset
Co Durham
Essex
Gloucestershire
Hampshire
Herefordshire
Hertfordshire
Huntingdonshire
Kent
Lancashire
Leicestershire
Lincolnshire
Greater London
Norfolk
Northamptonshire
Northumberland
Nottinghamshire
Oxfordshire
Rutland
Shropshire
Somerset
Staffordshire
Suffolk
Surrey
East Sussex
West Sussex
Warwickshire
Westmorland
Wiltshire
Worcestershire
North (Riding of) Yorkshire
East (Riding of) Yorkshire
West (Riding of) Yorkshire

WALES is a principality. Welsh is an official language, so the counties have two names.

Anglesey/Sir Fon
Brecknockshire/Sir Frycheiniog
Caernarfonshire/Sir Gaernarfon
Carmarthenshire/Sir Gaerfyrddin
Cardiganshire/Ceredigion
Denbighshire/Sir Ddinbych
Flintshire/Sir Fflint
Glamorgan/Morgannwg
Merioneth/Meirionnydd
Monmouthshire/Sir Fynwy
Montgomeryshire/Sir Drefaldwyn
Pembrokeshire/Sir Benfro
Radnorshire/Sir Faesyfed

SCOTLAND is a country with the following counties

Aberdeenshire
Angus/Forfarshire
Argyllshire
Ayrshire
Banffshire
Berwickshire
Buteshire
Cromartyshire
Caithness
Clackmannanshire
Dumfriesshire
Dunbartonshire/Dumbartonshire
East Lothian/Haddingtonshire
Fife
Inverness-shire
Kincardineshire
Kinross-shire
Kirkcudbrightshire
Lanarkshire
Midlothian/Edinburghshire
Morayshire
Nairnshire
Orkney
Peeblesshire
Perthshire
Renfrewshire
Ross-shire
Roxburghshire
Selkirkshire
Shetland
Stirlingshire
Sutherland
West Lothian/Linlithgowshire
Wigtownshire

NORTHERN IRELAND is a province and has six counties called

Co Antrim
Co Armagh
Co Down
Co Fermanagh
Co Tyrone
Co Londonderry/Derry

"Co" is pronouned "County"

Whilst on the subject

Great Britain = England+Scotland+Wales

United Kingdon (of Great Britiain and Northern Ireland) = Great Britain+Northern Ireland

British Isles=England+Scotland+Wales+All of Ireland+Orkney+Shetland Islands+Isle of Man +Inner and Outer Hebrides +Isle of Wight +Scilly Islands+Lundy Island+The Channel Islands+other islands

Ulster=Northern Ireland+Co Coval+Co Donegal+Co Monaghan (in the Republic of Ireland)

It is also worth noting that it is generally regarded as bad practive to use contractions outside written speech, so:

"Don't panic", Fred said to Jim who could not come up the stairs.

is OK, but

"Don't panic", Fred said to Jim who couldn't come up the stairs.

is WRONG, but you don't need to change it to

"Do not panic", Fred said to Jim who could not come up the stairs.

The improvement in clarity can be demonstrated by comparing "it is" rather than "it's" - this removes the confusion with the possessive form "its".

pick pick pick

In the UK, we "put the phone down" to end a call. "Hang up" is usually used only for its psudopsychlogical meaning.

Ending a call abruptly is called "slamming the phone down".

In the UK, only the calling party (the person making the phone call) can end the call - when they do they are said to have "cleared".

UK telephones DO NOT return to dial-tone either when the called party puts the phone down (as in the USA). The caller has to "replace the handset" and "pick it up" again to get another dialling tone.

If you put the phone down on a caller, they just hear silence until the handset is picked up again, and the conversation can continue.

You are "cut off" both if a call ends due to a network fault, or if you don't pay your bill.

The "handset" is often called a "receiver", but this is a perhaps a little old-fashioned.

There are some terrible phrases that have been used by BT (the UK's biggest Telco). My favourite is:

CPE=Customer Premisies Equipment

or

"telephone"

:!:

Also, the place you look for a telephone number is either in a telephone directory (or phone book), or you call directory enquiries. Perhaps "Search for Skype users" would be better as "search Skype directory".

Alternative I think that you would proably want to "Find Skype users". Searching is something that takes a long time. User's surely want to find a friend (something brief and simple) and not search (sounds like long-winded process).

So you can "search a directory" but "find a number".

Authorise/Authorize

This word is very Bureaucratic. This is something that banks and councils do.

Normally a person would "allow" or "permit" something.

:!: two nations divided by a common language :!:

We call the # key on the telephone "hash" not "pound". Pounds are what we pay our telephone bills with (with their hundreth division pence).

We used to weigh stuff in them as well, but we use kilograms now.

When a call is transferred, the destination person "picks it up". But a to "drop a call" is to disconnect it, not transfer it.

lb=pound (weight) (1lb=16oz)
oz=ounces

£=pound (money)
p=penny(singular)/pence (plural) (£1=100p)

#=hash (also slang for cannibis resin!)
(# never pronounced or used as "number" either. We always use ordinals - 1st 2nd 3rd 4th 5th and so on)

£sd=pounds, shillings and pence (old system, until 1969, 1s=12d, £1=20s)

2.2 lb of jam weighs about a kilogram...

We you call "central office" we call a "telephone exchange"....

Just for the reference, UK telephone numbers have the following formats:

(01XXX) XXXXXX - land line
(01X1) XXX XXXX - land line (major city)
(011X) XXX XXXX - land line (other cities)
(020) XXXX XXXX - land line (new scheme including London)

03/04 - not used

05XX-XXXXXXX - "find me anywhere" services. Low-leve premium rate

06 - not used

07XXX-XXXXXX - mobile phones and pages. The caller pays the premium rate to call the mobile.

08XXX-XXXXXX - Free call and less-than-national rate calls. The larger the third digit, the higher the call cost. 080 numbers are free.

09XXX-XXXXXX - Premium rate services. This are charged at rates higher than national call rates, and can include price per minute or price per call. The higher the third digit, the greater the cost.

Note: hypens are used in non-geographic numbers, because the number must always be dialled in full. Land lines, however, use brackets. To call a number with the same area code as your own in the brackets, you just call the number.