zh_TW is not set as fallback locale when selecting Hong Kong as location

[Walter Cheuk]

In 15.10, when selecting Hong Kong as the user location during installation, zh_TW is not set as a fallback language like before (i.e. 'LANGUAGE=zh_HK:en' rather than 'zh_HK:zh_TW:en'). Worse still, there is no 'Chinese (Taiwan)' available in 'Menu language' in 'Language support' like before (Both of them should be packed into one locale option 'Chinese (Traditional)'). This is a major issue as most Hong Kong users rely on zh_TW locale as many software are not translated into zh_HK.

[Ubuntu Foundations Team Bug Bot (crichton)]

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[Mingye Wang (artoria2e5)]

Assuming this a language-selector problem since this is the only thing to choose language during installation that I can think of so far.

https://bazaar.launchpad.net/~ubuntu-branches/ubuntu/wily/language-selector/wily/revision/39 looks revelant, but it actually happened on 2008-03-06 -- almost 8 years ago, and there seems to be nothing about zh_HK before then. Could you please point out when `before' actually refers to?

* * *

And, well, a +1 on this bug, since some fallback is indeed necessary here -- not only for zh_HK, but also for other smaller zh locales.

This tree roughly illustrates the 'relative distance' between locales.

zh:
  Hans: # simp script
    CN
    SG
  Hant: # trad script
    TW
    _geo_near_: # you might need a map here
      HK
      MO

For quite a while zh_HK users have been using zh_TW translations as their main source of fallback text, especially for many translations hosted on GNU TP. I haven't heard from any zh_MO users yet though.

Cross-script fallback is not recommended since:

  a. these chars do look quite different. (A user of one script is often able to recognize the other, but they look toooooo different and can almost be spotted with a glance.)
  b. the terminology used show significant difference across scripts.

See also https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=757867#c2 on some locale info.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Mingye Wang (artoria2e5)]

Can't quite reproduce this in Ubuntu 15.10 amd64, in a HyperV vm (which gives me bunches of I/O errors) -- I can only see an option for traditional chinese. The location selection looks more like some tz choosing.

It appears that the language list at /usr/lib/ubiquity/localechooser/languagelist looks quite different. Looking at http://packages.ubuntu.com/search?mode=exactfilename&suite=wily&section=all&arch=any&keywords=languagelist&searchon=contents points me to somewhere else, namely localechooser-data, which is essentially the source of ubiquity's data. Adding these projects .. too.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Walter Cheuk (wwycheuk)]

Try VirtualBox

[Gunnar Hjalmarsson (gunnarhj)]

@Walter: If Traditional Chinese has been installed, both zh_TW and zh_HK should indeed be available in the language list in the Language Support tool. If any of them isn't selected, you'll typically find it as a greyed-out item at the bottom of the list. In your case you should be able to drag the "zh_TW" item so it appears at the top between the "zh_HK" and "en" items.

[Gunnar Hjalmarsson (gunnarhj)]

Also, please note that the selected time zone location in the installer does not affect the LANGUAGE variable.

[Ｖ字龍(Vdragon) (vdragon)]

I have the same issue, my default locale is zh_TW and want zh_HK locale to be fallback, like LANGUAGE=zh_TW:zh_HK:zh

[Gunnar Hjalmarsson (gunnarhj)]

On 2016-01-20 17:32, Ｖ字龍(Vdragon) wrote:
> I have the same issue, my default locale is zh_TW and want zh_HK
> locale to be fallback, like LANGUAGE=zh_TW:zh_HK:zh

Then what prevents you from opening Language Support and making that change?

[Ｖ字龍(Vdragon) (vdragon)]

@Gunnar
<del>There's no problem changing the settings via the Language Support UI, however it would be better if this is set default.</del>
UPDATE: I read the bug description again and find out that this is not the same issue I've encountered.

[Walter Cheuk (wwycheuk)]

Attached picture is what I got in 15.10. I just installed 'Chinese (Simplified)' option and didn't change anything.

[Gunnar Hjalmarsson (gunnarhj)]

That looks odd. When you open Language Support, are you prompted to install additional language support?

Can you please let us know the output of these commands:

check-language-support

echo $(/usr/share/language-tools/language-options)

[Walter Cheuk (wwycheuk)]

en en_AU en_CA en_GB en_NZ en_US zh_CN zh_HK

[Walter Cheuk (wwycheuk)]

No prompt.

[Gunnar Hjalmarsson (gunnarhj)]

Then please run this command:

sudo apt-get install --reinstall language-pack-zh-hant-base

[Walter Cheuk (wwycheuk)]

The command completed with an error (see attached).

After a reboot, the 'language support' seems normal and I rearranged so that zh_TW come next to zh_HK. Some commands output (apt-get) does fallback to zh_TW, but the GUI such as the 'Personal', 'System' and 'Hardware' titles under system settings do not look perfectly as expected (see attached).

[Walter Cheuk (wwycheuk)]

after reinstall

[Gunnar Hjalmarsson (gunnarhj)]

Hmm... I don't know what "hash collision" means, but apparently there is something wrong with your locale (which most likely explains why the zh_TW.UTF-8 locale wasn't created successfully initially).

I would suggest that you regenerate all the locales with this command:

sudo locale-gen --purge

I don't speak any flavour of Chinese, so I'm not able to see what the problem would be with certain labels in System Settings.

[Walter Cheuk (wwycheuk)]

I reinstall the whole system anew, and the said problem is gone. Both zh_TW and zh_HK appear in the 'menu language' list. And output of command line seems to fallback correctly.

However, the labels under system settings are still not translated, like the attached picture. They are translated in 14.04.

[Gunnar Hjalmarsson (gunnarhj)]

Thanks for letting us know.

You may want to file a new pure translation bug - to the "Ubuntu Translations" project - about the latter, in order to remind the applicable translation team about it.

Closing this bug report.