Locales

The Use fake data method replaces a value with a generated value of the same label: a name, an address, a phone number, an identifier... Many labels can generate values for a specific language or country. This is the locale of the label.

For example, a location/phone field with the locale es-CL gets Chilean phone numbers, and with en-AU it gets Australian ones.

How the Locale Is Chosen

 Discovery                 Operation                    Generated value
 ---------                 ---------                    ---------------
 field "telefono"    ->    Use fake data            ->  +56 9 1234 5678
 label location/phone      label  location/phone
 locale es-CL              locale es-CL  (editable)
 type   mobile             type   mobile (editable)

1. Discovery assigns a label to each field. The label can also carry the locale of the data (for example person/name with es-AR).
2. In an anonymize or synthesize operation, the Use fake data method generates values for the field's label.
3. Click the pen icon (✎) of the field to see the options (see Edit Function Options). The editor shows one selector per label option, named after the option:
   • locale: the locales the label supports (see the table below). It starts with the locale of the field's label, or en. If that locale is not in the list, the first locale of the list is selected.
   • type and format: only for the labels that have them.
4. In custom functions, pass the locale as the second argument of genLabel. Without it, the locale is en_US. The Text format option (case) works with every locale:

genLabel('person/name', 'es-AR');
genLabel('location/phone', 'es-CL', { type: 'mobile' });
genLabel('location/city', 'pt_BR', { case: 'upper' });

Locale Codes

A locale is a language code, optionally followed by a country code:

Some labels list the locale with an underscore (pt_BR) and others with a hyphen (pt-BR), but both forms are the same locale: pt_BR, pt-BR and pt-br generate the same values in every label, in saved rules and in genLabel.

Locales per Label

Country-Specific Labels

These labels always generate values of one country, so they have no locale:

Locale Details

Names

type selects first (first name), last (last name), full (first and last name) or last_first (last and first name).

Addresses, Cities and States

• es-AR, es-PE, es-EC and es-CL use their own lists of streets, cities and regions. type abbr gives the region abbreviation.
• en-NZ uses its own lists of streets, cities and regions. location/state always gives the full region name: there is no list of New Zealand region abbreviations, so type abbr is ignored.
• location/city has no en-AU locale: there is no list of Australian cities.
• The other locales use the generic generator for the language.
• location/country with any gives the country names in English.

Phone Numbers

Zip Codes

Vehicle Plates

Identifiers

Language-Only Labels

vehicle/fuel, vehicle/types, flights/fare, location/nationality, general/colors, business/order_status, entertainment/movie/genre and person/sex only have a language (en, es, pt, it, fr). The values come in English when the generator has no list for that language. location/nationality has lists for es, pt and it. general/colors, business/order_status, entertainment/movie/genre and location/nationality also accept the language with a country (es-ES, pt-BR).

business/department, business/job_title and datetime/weekday use the generic generator for the language. pt gives Portuguese (Brazil) values.

Accents and Fallbacks

• Generated text has its accents removed: José becomes Jose, and Begoña becomes Begona.
• A locale whose language and country codes are the same (fr-FR, de-DE, it-IT) is used as the language (fr, de, it).
• If the generic generator has no data for a country, it uses the language of the locale: es-CR uses es, and en-NZ uses en.
• If it has no data for a language alone, it uses the first country of the language: pt uses pt-BR.
• If the locale is empty or the generic generator has no data for its language (for example eu-ES), en is used. A value never takes the language of the previous value.

See Also

• Anonymize: the Use fake data method and its options
• Synthesize
• Custom functions: genLabel
• Labels