Heads-up: Duplicate Welcome Translations

Development Discussion Translations
#1

Hi translators.

We have a slight problem, and evident by this bug report, we have a mix of languages and their localised variants -- this has meant the "main" language misses out for different areas of the world. In some cases, the localised version is incomplete and the one users will see, such as de_DE (German for Germany users) while the complete de (German) translation goes unused (except for users outside of Germany).

To address this, the translations will be re-organised, I'm not too entirely sure how Transifex will react, since this will be a manual task.

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  • For affected languages, you may need to re-add yourself as contributors in the upcoming days.
  • When requesting new languages in future:
    • If it's new, please pick the main language first.
    • If one exists, and you see a need for a localised version (e.g. en_US and en_GB use different spellings), the language request will be accepted. You can also ask us to duplicate the translation in full (e.g. de → de_DE) to save having to re-translate everything for a few differences.

If there's any comments or concerns about this change, please let me know!

Fragen zu Transifex DE und de_DE
#2
#3

How can I add myself to German?

#4

Providing you have signed up for Transifex, you just go to the German language page and join the "team" / start translating. This should add you as a contributor.

I'm guessing once this change happens, anyone still in the "German (Germany)" team may just get notified it's been deleted. (Just as a guess :confused:)

If you're new, see this guide:

1 Like
#5

Written Portuguese in Portugal and in Brazil differs in ways approaching the US-UK English divide.

Is the 33% of “Portuguese” from Portugal and will it get lost if “Portuguese (Brazil)” gets copied on top of it?

By the way, is there an “English (United States)” in the list?

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#6

Thanks for pointing that out – this is the sort of thing that needs to be known before any are dropped. In this case, Portuguese languages should remain untouched, meaning Brazil users will see a more completed translation.

“English (United States)” is the source translation, so it isn’t listed for translating.

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#7

@lah7 I actually began translating de_DE. How is in charge to bring over the old DE to de_DE?

#8

We could copy de to de_DE, however I fear efforts would be duplicated if both co-exist. Welcome will use de if de_DE is not present and Germany is home to German, so a de locale will work on German speaking computers that happen to be outside of Germany.

We should start utilising Transifex’s review function, so we can have translators verifying existing work. :slight_smile:

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#9

Great idea! How do we do that?

So basically, DE is a backup that can just stay as is, correct?

#10

It’s a permissions thing, I’ll need to confer with @Wimpy with how we approach this (I also might not have permissions to change permissions, ironically:grin: )

Kind of, as de_DE is mostly incomplete and resulted in most German (Germany) users welcomed in mostly English in 17.04, I was thinking of dropping de_DE entirely, as de isn’t tied to a specific locale.

#11

Hang on, now I am confused. When you say “dropping”, shall I stop to translate de_DE again?

#12

By “dropping” I mean removing the language from Transifex and Welcome – we’re thinking of just using the de locale (99% translated) instead.

Slight inconvenience, I know - but efforts are being duplicated as the two locales are identical.

#13

OK. I will focus my efforts on DE again then…Thank you.

#14

Update to this – I’m reluctant to make any major changes with translations, so just these have been dropped for now:

  • de_DE (39%) => de (100%)
  • it_IT (11%) => it (99%)
  • sr_RS (0%) => sr (99%)

Here’s the announcement on Transifex.

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#15

That rang alarm bells so I did a quick Google search.

That gives sr_RS as Serbian from Serbia while se is Sami (from northern Scandinavia).

#16

Thanks for spotting that, luckily that was just a typo on this post.

Even so, no languages were “moved”, it was more to indicate inheritance – so no mix up would have happened :slight_smile: An empty sr_SR now uses sr.

1 Like
#17

I am sorry to ask all these questions but I need some more clarity. Between the following pairs, which one should I work on?

  • Spanish (Spain) (es_ES) vs. Spanish (es)
  • Dutch (nl) vs. Dutch (Netherlands) (nl_NL)
#18

It’s okay to ask, this is the issue at hand.

For both of those, the country locale is near completion (es_ES, nl_NL) but the main language is not. Chances are, it’s the country locale that would be widely used (which posed problems when German’s de_DE was incomplete) and the main locale should be used for Dutch/Spanish outside of Spain/Netherlands in theory.

I would suggest perfecting the most complete locale (so es_ES, nl_NL) and if we decide to merge these country locales to its general language locale, less efforts would have been wasted (except we would exclude merging any locales that do have major differences)

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#19

I started Translating Hebrew For the Ubuntu MATE Welcome Screen and Also for The MATE Desktop

The Difference is that in Ubuntu MATE It shows up as “Hebrew(israel)” and in the MATE Desktop it Shows up as Just Hebrew

Will They both Sync up? Or is there a Need to Remove “Hebrew(Israel)” and Put all the Translations to a new “Hebrew”?

#20

The two won’t sync up. That would need to be a manual “developer” task as it would risk losing the 3 existing contributors for “Hebrew (Israel)” - to them, it might look like we ‘deleted’ their locale if we were to change it.

For new languages, we’d prefer to opt for the “general” locale so it reaches more audiences, however since Israel is the main language for Hebrew, we should be good to keep it as it is for now.

It is possible to copy the existing translations for “Hebrew (Israel)” to “Hebrew”, but that would mean duplicating translation efforts, so it’s all good to co-translate along the other Hebrew translators.