In Sweden it is short for half an hour before two... I was informed by my Swedish colleagues in Dublin when I worked there that the Irish did it the wrong way (as in the Irish meant half past two) ... There had appearently been some misunderstandings before... :)
And if the Irish said they...
I have worked as a localizer for Microsoft (in Dublin), and did Office 97. We had a couple of Brazilian localizers there as the Brazilian Portugese was different than the Portugese Portugese... And this was for a piece of software with very limited scope, so for fiction-writing I can easily see...
Not submarine-based as such, but the Swedish game Leviathan's setting us supposed to be that mankind has been forced to live in cities underwater as Aliens came and took over the surface of the world. But as such submariunes of course play an inmportant role as that is how you travel between...