Languages should not be translated in the select box

[Nguyễn Hải Nam]

Binary package hint: language-selector

In any other system (Windows, Mac OS X, or in Mediawiki), the language select box is not translated. This help a user know to turn into his prefered language without knowing what his language is called in the current locale.

However, language-selector in Ubuntu translates this list. Concretely, line 118-125 from LanguageSelector/LocaleInfo.py does this. When we, vietnamese users, translate this list into Vietnamese, and have a problem: all language are prefixed by "Tiếng" (meaning "language" in Vietnamese), and user couldn't use keyboard to quickly navigate to a language because they all have the same prefix.

Because of these two problems, we think unanimously that this should be changed: language should not be translated in that select box. Cf. the discussion (in Vietnamese):
http://lists.hanoilug.org/pipermail/du-an-most/2011-May/004000.html

Best regards,

[Gunnar Hjalmarsson (gunnarhj)]

Hello Hai-Nam,

Thanks for your help to make Ubuntu better by posting this suggestion. If I understand it correctly, you are talking about the language list that is displayed in the "Installed Languages" window, and you would prefer to have the language names displayed in respective native language rather than the current display language. That might be achieved by changing line 725 in LanguageSelector/gtk/GtkLanguageSelector.py from

    lang_name = self._localeinfo.translate(lang.languageCode)

to

    lang_name = self._localeinfo.translate(lang.languageCode, native=True)

I'm not sure that would be a desirable change to most Ubuntu users, though. Let me ask: Would it make sense to drop the prefix you mention in the Vietnamese translation? After all, the column title is "Language", so you might consider "Tiếng" be implicitly prefixed.

[Nguyễn Hải Nam (jcisio)]

Hi Gunnar,

You understand it correctly. And that's the common behavior across all OS (Windows, OS X, even in iOS, in Wikipedia...): when you want to change the language, the list of available languages uses native names.

In our case, remove "Tiếng" make it incorrect in many case, as not every country has its own language (we have "Tiếng" + country name = language name, if we remove "Tiếng", it does not make sense). So, this change had been suggested, but we didn't think it is a correct change.

Regards,

[David Planella (dpm)]

El dl 16 de 05 de 2011 a les 16:03 +0000, en/na Hai-Nam Nguyen va
escriure:
>
> You understand it correctly. And that's the common behavior across all
> OS (Windows, OS X, even in iOS, in Wikipedia...): when you want to
> change the language, the list of available languages uses native
> names.

Note that the language-selector behaviour might not follow what other
platforms do, but it is consistent with gdm's behaviour when showing the
list of languages.

--
David Planella
Ubuntu Translations Coordinator
www.ubuntu.com / www.davidplanella.wordpress.com
www.identi.ca/dplanella / www.twitter.com/dplanella

[Nguyễn Hải Nam (jcisio)]

In fact, when the list is used to switch to a language, the native name is always used: in Ubuntu, the log-in screen or the install screen always behaves like that.

[Gunnar Hjalmarsson (gunnarhj)]

I'm not ready to propose that it's changed for all users at this time, but I'll propose a hack for Vietnamese users; please see the linked branch.

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

I agree that it's generally desirable to translate language names. The assumption is that on a desktop PC you generally ought to know the system's primary language, after all you chose it in the installer. Then translated language names make it a lot easier to find other languages.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package language-selector - 0.36

---------------
language-selector (0.36) oneiric; urgency=low

  [ Gunnar Hjalmarsson ]
  * LanguageSelector/gtk/GtkLanguageSelector.py:
    Hack for Vietnamese users: Make the language names in the list over
    installable languages be displayed in respective native language when
    the current language is Vietnamese (LP: #783090).
  * fontconfig/69-language-selector-ja-jp.conf:
    Drop DejaVu (LP: #759882).

  [ Martin Pitt ]
  * data/pkg_depends: Install firefox-locale-*.
 -- Gunnar Hjalmarsson <email address hidden> Mon, 23 May 2011 14:45:22 +0200