The way we see things

Every so often, we get requests for the translation and localization of material into Thai – a script language that uses Arabic numerals. I'm a relative n00b at Glyph, and while it's no surprise that most of these documents contain dates, it was surprising to see a range of years in the 26th century. What?

Thai dates follow the usual Gregorian calendar (same references to the usual months), but the years are numbered according to the Buddhist calendar as Y + 543 years to mark the estimated birth of the Buddha in 543 B.C. That would put the year 2012 at 2555 in Thai translations, well past any settings of sci-fi movies such as Blade Runner or Back to the Future II.

References to year are often made in both Western calendar years and Buddhist Era years (numerous references on page 4 of this article about Thai cremation volumes, for example, put the latter in brackets). Blade Runner, in 2019, would have been 2562.