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Language and region names story

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Axel Hecht

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Sep 27, 2012, 12:44:47 PM9/27/12
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Hi,

there are a host of bugs that GPHemsley is driving to make us not suck
around language and region names.

Here's what I hope that effort gets us:

- no more requirements to add locale or region codes to our code to make
things work right.
- reduce the amount of locale and region codes to locales to a
reasonable amount
- produce good UX in the general case.

To achieve that, I propose that we

- file bugs on dictionaries to support fallback from the addon that
provides them
- add languages and regions in their native names as non-localizable
fallback to gecko (de = Deutsch, de = Deutschland)
- with 20% of the languages/regions cover 80% of the population, and put
that into a localizable file (80/20 just picked because 80/20 rule)
- support additional entries in those files to be provided by the
localization, so that we can fix stuff

Does that sound reasonable?

Axel

Kevin Scannell

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Sep 27, 2012, 3:00:27 PM9/27/12
to dev-...@lists.mozilla.org
On Thu, Sep 27, 2012 at 11:44 AM, Axel Hecht <l1...@mozilla.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> there are a host of bugs that GPHemsley is driving to make us not suck
> around language and region names.
>
> Here's what I hope that effort gets us:
>
> - no more requirements to add locale or region codes to our code to make
> things work right.
> - reduce the amount of locale and region codes to locales to a reasonable
> amount
> - produce good UX in the general case.
>
> To achieve that, I propose that we
>
> - file bugs on dictionaries to support fallback from the addon that provides
> them

By this do you mean asking dictionary authors to rename .dic/.aff files to
XXX.dic where 'XXX' is the string that will appear in the context menu?

> - add languages and regions in their native names as non-localizable
> fallback to gecko (de = Deutsch, de = Deutschland)

All of ISO 639-3? I can help assemble the list of language autonyms
if so - they're
not easy to find all in one place.

> - with 20% of the languages/regions cover 80% of the population, and put
> that into a localizable file (80/20 just picked because 80/20 rule)

I had a proposal for choosing a set of about 200 localizable language
names back in June:
https://groups.google.com/d/msg/mozilla.dev.l10n/L4KF6mNTwRA/xLBik8KhCa8J

I think something along these lines will work better than top 20% of
languages by,
say, speaker population or whatever.


> - support additional entries in those files to be provided by the
> localization, so that we can fix stuff
>
> Does that sound reasonable?
>

Yes, modulo questions raised above!

Kevin

Jesper Kristensen

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Sep 27, 2012, 3:45:34 PM9/27/12
to
Den 27-09-2012 21:00Kevin Scannell skrev:
> On Thu, Sep 27, 2012 at 11:44 AM, Axel Hecht <l1...@mozilla.com> wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> there are a host of bugs that GPHemsley is driving to make us not suck
>> around language and region names.
>>
>> Here's what I hope that effort gets us:
>>
>> - no more requirements to add locale or region codes to our code to make
>> things work right.
>> - reduce the amount of locale and region codes to locales to a reasonable
>> amount
>> - produce good UX in the general case.
>>
>> To achieve that, I propose that we
>>
>> - file bugs on dictionaries to support fallback from the addon that provides
>> them
>
> By this do you mean asking dictionary authors to rename .dic/.aff files to
> XXX.dic where 'XXX' is the string that will appear in the context menu?

I don't know what Axel meant, but you cannot just rename the dic/aff
files like that. The dic/aff file names must be locale codes or the
dictionary selection based on website language will not work.

I am not sure what support there is in Firefox now. It seems to have
changed not so long ago in
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=730209

Axel Hecht

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Sep 27, 2012, 3:57:58 PM9/27/12
to
On 27.09.12 21:00, Kevin Scannell wrote:
> On Thu, Sep 27, 2012 at 11:44 AM, Axel Hecht <l1...@mozilla.com> wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> there are a host of bugs that GPHemsley is driving to make us not suck
>> around language and region names.
>>
>> Here's what I hope that effort gets us:
>>
>> - no more requirements to add locale or region codes to our code to make
>> things work right.
>> - reduce the amount of locale and region codes to locales to a reasonable
>> amount
>> - produce good UX in the general case.
>>
>> To achieve that, I propose that we
>>
>> - file bugs on dictionaries to support fallback from the addon that provides
>> them
>
> By this do you mean asking dictionary authors to rename .dic/.aff files to
> XXX.dic where 'XXX' is the string that will appear in the context menu?

I'm more thinking along the lines of associating the dictionary name
with the add-on name that it's coming from, if there's a one-to-one
correspondence. Or supporting prefs to come from the add-on to supply
the language name. But that's in the odd case where we wouldn't have at
least the autonym.

>> - add languages and regions in their native names as non-localizable
>> fallback to gecko (de = Deutsch, de = Deutschland)
>
> All of ISO 639-3? I can help assemble the list of language autonyms
> if so - they're
> not easy to find all in one place.

That'd be great. Thanks.

>> - with 20% of the languages/regions cover 80% of the population, and put
>> that into a localizable file (80/20 just picked because 80/20 rule)
>
> I had a proposal for choosing a set of about 200 localizable language
> names back in June:
> https://groups.google.com/d/msg/mozilla.dev.l10n/L4KF6mNTwRA/xLBik8KhCa8J
>
> I think something along these lines will work better than top 20% of
> languages by,
> say, speaker population or whatever.

Can you detail on that? Like, I know some 100 languages by name, but
their impact on my browsing behavior is nil. What would be the value of
seeing Zulu compared to isiZulu? Even if I'd be interested in some
out-of-the-ordinary language, I'd know that language autonym?

And yes, I'd be totally fine throwing away a 100 already localized
names, or ignoring that they're there.

Axel

Kevin Scannell

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Sep 27, 2012, 5:06:42 PM9/27/12
to dev-...@lists.mozilla.org
On Thu, Sep 27, 2012 at 2:57 PM, Axel Hecht <l1...@mozilla.com> wrote:
> On 27.09.12 21:00, Kevin Scannell wrote:
>>
>> On Thu, Sep 27, 2012 at 11:44 AM, Axel Hecht <l1...@mozilla.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> there are a host of bugs that GPHemsley is driving to make us not suck
>>> around language and region names.
>>>
>>> Here's what I hope that effort gets us:
>>>
>>> - no more requirements to add locale or region codes to our code to make
>>> things work right.
>>> - reduce the amount of locale and region codes to locales to a reasonable
>>> amount
>>> - produce good UX in the general case.
>>>
>>> To achieve that, I propose that we
>>>
>>> - file bugs on dictionaries to support fallback from the addon that
>>> provides
>>> them
>>
>>
>> By this do you mean asking dictionary authors to rename .dic/.aff files to
>> XXX.dic where 'XXX' is the string that will appear in the context menu?
>
>
> I'm more thinking along the lines of associating the dictionary name with
> the add-on name that it's coming from, if there's a one-to-one
> correspondence. Or supporting prefs to come from the add-on to supply the
> language name. But that's in the odd case where we wouldn't have at least
> the autonym.

That's fine with me in principle as long as it's something well-documented
and relatively easy for dictionary maintainers (many of whom are not
technically-oriented - know just enough to zip up a .dic and .aff file).

And thanks Jesper, I'd forgotten that change had landed. Renaming
.dic was the traditional fix suggested to us by AMO editors but you're
correct that it doesn't work any more.


...

>
>>> - with 20% of the languages/regions cover 80% of the population, and put
>>> that into a localizable file (80/20 just picked because 80/20 rule)
>>
>>
>> I had a proposal for choosing a set of about 200 localizable language
>> names back in June:
>> https://groups.google.com/d/msg/mozilla.dev.l10n/L4KF6mNTwRA/xLBik8KhCa8J
>>
>> I think something along these lines will work better than top 20% of
>> languages by,
>> say, speaker population or whatever.
>
>
> Can you detail on that? Like, I know some 100 languages by name, but their
> impact on my browsing behavior is nil. What would be the value of seeing
> Zulu compared to isiZulu? Even if I'd be interested in some
> out-of-the-ordinary language, I'd know that language autonym?
>

Well I thought I was helping you produce a *smaller* list with my
suggestion - 20% of ISO-639-3 is like 1400 language names.

Putting my localizer hat
on for a second, the ideal would be for a given locale to be able to pick
the set of languages they'd like to localize. Personally I'd much rather
see Ungáiris over Magyar, and Gearmáinis over Deutsch, even though I'd
understand either way. And putting it in the hands of locale teams would
be nice because it might be hard to predict which language names
exist and are important in a given locale - for Irish it would be much
nicer to see Breatnais and Manainnis over Cymrag and Gaelg -
many Irish people would speak these or another Celtic language,
but it's unlikely many non-Celtic locales would care about them

Kevin

Michael Bauer

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Sep 27, 2012, 5:28:50 PM9/27/12
to dev-...@lists.mozilla.org
I concur - for another reason too. I realise language maintenane is
probably not a key motivator (and not so relevant for big languages) but
for smaller languages like Irish, Welsh or Samoan, it's one of the
relatively few instances in which people are likely to see such names
for languages outside their normal sphere "outside the classroom" or
"off the tv screen". This does have a positive impact on such languages.
On two occassions I've come across language/country name debates IRL
where someone said "but it's like that in Firefox". So especially in
small languages localizing these can have a beneficial impact on usage,
standardisation and normalisation I'd say.

Michael

27/09/2012 22:06, sgrìobh Kevin Scannell:

Axel Hecht

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Sep 27, 2012, 5:43:30 PM9/27/12
to
Hah, that's why I meant that my 80/20 numbers were there only because
the 80/20 rule is so popular. In any case, I'd gauge by 80% of
population much more than 20% of languages or regions.

> Putting my localizer hat
> on for a second, the ideal would be for a given locale to be able to pick
> the set of languages they'd like to localize. Personally I'd much rather
> see Ungáiris over Magyar, and Gearmáinis over Deutsch, even though I'd
> understand either way. And putting it in the hands of locale teams would
> be nice because it might be hard to predict which language names
> exist and are important in a given locale - for Irish it would be much
> nicer to see Breatnais and Manainnis over Cymrag and Gaelg -
> many Irish people would speak these or another Celtic language,
> but it's unlikely many non-Celtic locales would care about them
>

That's what my "support additional entries" was supposed to mean. I'd
add a rule to filter.py that makes compare-locales ignore entries in the
welsh languagenames.properties that don't exist in en-US.

Thus en-US would only need to contain the global kernel, and local
communities can extend that as they see fit with languages or regions
that make sense, and are sufficiently different from thte autonyms.

Axel


Marion Gunn

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Mar 4, 2013, 7:03:22 AM3/4/13
to dev-...@lists.mozilla.org
I know you are a good man, Michael, so I trust you will not take it
amiss if I ask you to make a practice of saying "smaller language
communities like Irish, Welsh or Samoan..." instead of "smaller
languages like Irish, Welsh or Samoan..." (because, if you give the good
example in this, others will surely follow).

All the best,
mg


Scríobh 27/09/2012 22:28, Michael Bauer:
> I concur - for another reason too. I realise language maintenane is
> probably not a key motivator (and not so relevant for big languages)
> but for smaller languages like Irish, Welsh or Samoan, it's one of the
> relatively few instances in which people are likely to see such names
> for languages outside their normal sphere "outside the classroom" or
> "off the tv screen". This does have a positive impact on such
> languages. On two occassions I've come across language/country name
> debates IRL where someone said "but it's like that in Firefox". So
> especially in small languages localizing these can have a beneficial
> impact on usage, standardisation and normalisation I'd say.
>
> Michael
>
> 27/09/2012 22:06, sgrìobh Kevin Scannell:
>> Personally I'd much rather
>> see Ungáiris over Magyar, and Gearmáinis over Deutsch,
>
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> dev-l10n mailing list
> dev-...@lists.mozilla.org
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