Nigel Lindup

They are used by Trados Studio to provide many autolocalisation tasks where different variants of the same main language handle things differently (dates, numbers, units etc.):

Nigel Lindup said:

it seems to me that it must be more efficient to have all Spanish, English etc. in the same place to ensure that segments that occurred in a document from Chile, say, and could easily have occurred in  a Spain text, aren't missed when I'm later translating a Spain document.

If this is easier for you and the differences don't matter then do just that.  If you use AnyTM for your translation memories you can pick one variant and use that for all.  With 2021 we're somewhat less reliant on these settings anyway as you have more control over them now, but you do still need them in Studio because we don't support the generic English, German, French etc.

Thanks Paul, that's very helpful. I also read your lengthy piece on Too many language variants, which was highly informative. I sometimes have the feeling that developers are searching for new functions to fill up the vast processing capacity available, rather than simply meeting the user's needs and leaving it at that. Think of all the information displays in cars these days: most of it is entirely superfluous but they have to justify the existence of a rather powerful computer somehow. It might be better to leave well enough alone.

Thanks Paul, that's very helpful. I also read your lengthy piece on Too many language variants, which was highly informative. I sometimes have the feeling that developers are searching for new functions to fill up the vast processing capacity available, rather than simply meeting the user's needs and leaving it at that. Think of all the information displays in cars these days: most of it is entirely superfluous but they have to justify the existence of a rather powerful computer somehow. It might be better to leave well enough alone.