Belarusian localization of Firefox

[mee...@gmail.com]

Hi everyone!

Today I know that Firefox has dropped support of localization to Belarusian language. The issue: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1304743

I want to Belarusian be present in Firefox, and I can take the support over.
But firstly I want to estimate daily effort and get the answers on some questions, because I am complete newbie in localizing Mozilla products.

I found A LOT of information concerning Firefox (and other Mozilla products) localization process, but nothing really useful. It looks like I should clone the localization from some mercurial repo, make my changes and send them back some way (push in other branch?)

So my questions are:

1) What's the real localization process, briefly? Link to article with technical details would be useful.

2) Francesco Lodolo has mentioned that "we need a consistent effort and a community behind it". Consistent effort is not a problem - I already have some experience in localizing FOSS apps. But does "community" means that just a single me would not be enough?

3) What parts of Firefox have the biggest lack of translation? I have cloned hg.mozilla.org/releases/l10n/mozilla-aurora/be and opened a few random .dtd files - they were fully localized.

[Michael Bauer]

Someone else will have to chip in regarding the technical aspects of
rescuing the old strings but in terms of day to day practicalities:
1) No need to fight with mercurial, most locales translate via Pootle
https://mozilla.locamotion.org either online or offline using the po
files. Unless you want to use mercurial of course.
2) In terms of effort, once the translation is at 100% again, I would
say there are maybe 5 working hours needed for each cycle - I think
they're monthly cycles just now. So it is not a massive amount of work.
A bit more when you factor in a few ancillary pieces that need
maintaining on Pontoon (don't panic, not all are required)
https://pontoon.mozilla.org/projects/ but certainly very manageable. I
would imagine when the old translations are rescued, there should be a
high % of translated strings already.
3) There are plenty of one-person-teams but of course, if you can grow
it into a small team, that is better so the locale does not fall back if
the one localizer somehow cannot maintain their work.

Michael

Sgrìobh mee...@gmail.com na leanas 22/11/2016 aig 16:00:

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[Michal Stanke]

Hi.

Francesco can tell you better, how much is it needed to get Belarusian
Firefox to a shippable shape, but as for daily effort, there is actually
not much on Firefox itself. I see 3000 strings missing now, which means
a bit extra work, but I do not know, where are they missing. Most of
them will be in developer tools I think.

The localization happens in the cycles of the same length as development
cycles are, that means 6-8 weeks. During the cycle, there are usually
around 300 new strings needed for translation. So if you have enough
time for 200-250 strings per month, you should be good.

You won't need to use mercurial or any VCS directly. We have tool for
localization, which will help you a lot. You can even choose between
Pontoon
<https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Localization/Localizing_with_Pontoon>
and Pootle
<http://docs.translatehouse.org/projects/pootle/en/stable-2.7.6/index.html>.

For the localization sustainability, it would be definitely better to be
at least two. Do not know, how many single teams there are.

You won't see the missing strings in the files. The list of missing
strings can be found here
<https://l10n.mozilla.org/shipping/dashboard?locale=be> and you would
need to add them yourself in the files, or both the tools above will do
it for you as you translate.

Regards,
Michal Stanke

Dne 22.11.2016 v 17:00 mee...@gmail.com napsal(a):

[Francesco Lodolo [:flod]]

Hi,
As others already explained, there's no need to work on Mercurial
repositories, these days you can chose between two online tools.
Pontoon: https://pontoon.mozilla.org/
Pootle: https://mozilla.locamotion.org/

Since we still have Mercurial repositories with the translated strings,
you could chose any of the two and import data, with a caveat: right now
we don't have Belarusian builds, so you won't be able to test your work
on a localized version of Firefox.
Pootle, unlike Pontoon, lets you build a language pack that you can
install on the English build of Firefox Developer Edition.

Only once localization reaches a good point of completion, and a steady
number of testers in the Developer Edition channel, we can think about
enabling localized builds again for Developer Edition.

Amount of work: there's a new release of Firefox every 6-8 weeks, with a
reduced number of new strings between versions.
Right now Firefox for Belarusian is missing about 3700 strings (6900
translated). It's hard to tell how many of them are in devtools at the
moment. Note that we ask locales to translate also key pages on
mozilla.org (about 1500 strings, not sure how many of them were
translated), and a few other projects strictly related to Firefox (e.g.
Firefox Health Report).

About the community effort note:
* As you noticed from the bug, removing a shipping locale is a painful
and long process. For this reason we're going to ask new locales to show
consistent work on their localization before thinking about shipping,
and it's a long time commitment. Let's say we enable localized builds of
Developer Edition two months from now, it would still take several more
months after that to ship in a release.
* We can't stop shipping localized builds once started, so we need to
keep shipping updates, with mixed localized text and English. That's a
poor experience for users, especially when you reach a point where key
elements of the UI, or key new features, are in a language that they
don't understand.
* While we won't put a hard limit on 1-person teams (we have a few very
successful examples out there), we also don't encourage that. It's
important to have several people working on the localization, if nothing
else to ensure proper QA and testing. That's why we insist on the
importance of building a community around it.

Francesco

[Leandro Regueiro]

Hi,
this is the current status of Firefox translation to Belarusian
https://mozilla.locamotion.org/be/firefox/

After a quick investigation there are no active translation since
2014. The contact details for your team are in
https://wiki.mozilla.org/L10n:Teams:be I encourage you to get in touch
with previous translator in case you want to continue the translation
effort.


Bye

[mee...@gmail.com]

Thanks everyone for the help. Sorry for delayed answer.

I'll try to make Firefox ready for shipping belarusian version, and we'll see do I have enough enthusiasm. No guarantee. I will just work from time to time, and I hope some day I'll reach the shippable state.

Please, specify such state for me so I can see the light at the end of the tunnel while working.

> I encourage you to get in touch with previous translator

His only known contact is an email. I already wrote to it, but his email server rejects the messages.

[Francesco Lodolo [:flod]]

Il 25/11/16 15.11, mee...@gmail.com ha scritto:

> Thanks everyone for the help. Sorry for delayed answer.
> I'll try to make Firefox ready for shipping belarusian version, and we'll see do I have enough enthusiasm. No guarantee. I will just work from time to time, and I hope some day I'll reach the shippable state.
>
> Please, specify such state for me so I can see the light at the end of the tunnel while working.

I'd suggest to double check the status in a few weeks (feel free to send
me an email, or file a bug to track your activity), and see where we are at.

Francesco

[Leandro Regueiro]

2016-11-25 15:21 GMT+01:00 Francesco Lodolo [:flod] <fl...@lodolo.net>:
> Il 25/11/16 15.11, mee...@gmail.com ha scritto:
>>

>> Thanks everyone for the help. Sorry for delayed answer.
>> I'll try to make Firefox ready for shipping belarusian version, and we'll
>> see do I have enough enthusiasm. No guarantee. I will just work from time to
>> time, and I hope some day I'll reach the shippable state.

Hi,
just gave you rights to translate Belarusian. It is disappointing you
can't contact previous language leader.


Bye

>> Please, specify such state for me so I can see the light at the end of the
>> tunnel while working.
>

> I'd suggest to double check the status in a few weeks (feel free to send me
> an email, or file a bug to track your activity), and see where we are at.
>
> Francesco
>

[dziani...@gmail.com]

I can join team, i'm native belarusian and russian speaker and familiar with general translation process. Can I help with translation?

[mee...@gmail.com]

Hi, Dzianis:) Sure, please join the team. I'll plan to use GNOME terminology dictionary: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/booxter/i18n-bel-gnome/master/terminology.po

[dziani...@gmail.com]

Can you help me with translation start ?

Should I register on that resources or use standalone ones like https://www.kde.org/applications/development/lokalize ?

Also I think we can talk in IM to more quickly solve working questions ?

my fb - https://www.facebook.com/dzianis.sheka
skype: denis.sheko
and telegram \ viber - +375292770790

[dek...@gmail.com]

Hello everyone,

I have just seen the shocking and surprising news about our Belarusian locale "dying". Any hope on saving it? I can help (if it's not too late), native Belarusian, know 6 languages but not experienced in translation process, having some enthusiasm to save the world (or at least our dear locale).

I tried to start helping, actually, previously in Spring 2016, but the entrance was too difficult due to, umm, "death" of previous Belarusian localization team.

пятница, 2 декабря 2016 г., 0:37:39 UTC+1 пользователь mee...@gmail.com написал:

[Francesco Lodolo [:flod]]

Hi,
There's also a thread on dev-l10n-new-locales, hopefully Hanna will join
this one
https://groups.google.com/d/msg/mozilla.dev.l10n.new-locales/Xq7HZNObj4U/uxynAZEsBgAJ

My suggestion is to try to get in touch with each other, maybe create a
space to start the communication and figure out how to move forward.

A simple Etherpad could be a start: names of people interested in
contributing, experience, roles, set up a first meeting, identify a more
stable communication channel, and move on from there.

If you need help, just let us know.

Francesco