Web-Facing Change PSA: LanguageDetector support for Traditional vs. Simplified Chinese

[Chromestatus]

Contact emails

rei...@chromium.org

Specification

https://webmachinelearning.github.io/translation-api/#language-detector-api

Summary

Two new detectable language codes, "zh-Hant" and "zh-Hans" will be added. Detection results that previously returned "zh" will now return one of these new values. While this is a developer-visible change it fits within the framework already present in the API for returning more specific language codes. For example ja vs. ja-Latn. This notice is being sent as a PSA for developers who have requested these more specific detection results.

Blink component

Blink>AI>Translator & Language Detector

Web Feature ID

languagedetector

Risks

Interoperability and Compatibility

No interoperability risk as this is an incremental change to a shipping single-engine feature. The main compatibility risk is sites expecting the original "zh" output not handling the more specific "zh-Hant" or "zh-Hans" values. This is not an incompatible change because script variants are allowed by the specification and already returned in other cases.

Gecko: Negative (https://github.com/mozilla/standards-positions/issues/1015) Note, this position mainly refers to the Translator API rather than the Language Detector API since they were shipped as a pair. No position has been requested for this specific change.

WebKit: No signal (https://github.com/WebKit/standards-positions/issues/339)

Web developers: Strongly positive Private feedback from developers that the ability to differentiate here extremely important.

Other signals:

WebView application risks

Does this intent deprecate or change behavior of existing APIs, such that it has potentially high risk for Android WebView-based applications?

No information provided

Debuggability

No information provided

Will this feature be supported on all six Blink platforms (Windows, Mac, Linux, ChromeOS, Android, and Android WebView)?

Yes

Is this feature fully tested by web-platform-tests?

Yes
New tests have been added to exercise this case.

Tracking bug

https://crbug.com/519251262

Estimated milestones

Shipping on desktop	151
Shipping on Android	151
Shipping on WebView	151

Link to entry on the Chrome Platform Status

https://chromestatus.com/feature/5138651886518272

This intent message was generated by Chrome Platform Status.