Wrong launchpad translations of Desktop keyword causing issues

[Alkis Georgopoulos]

Traditionally, the "Desktop" folder has been translated to Greek as "Επιφάνεια εργασίας".
Here's an example from Ubuntu 22.04:

# gettext -d xdg-user-dirs Desktop
Επιφάνεια εργασίας

AFAIK, upstream xdg-user-dirs is still using that:
https://translationproject.org/team/el.html

But an Ubuntu specific translation made in Launchpad overrides that to just "Επιφάνεια":
https://translations.launchpad.net/ubuntu/noble/+source/xdg-user-dirs/+pots/xdg-user-dirs/el/+translate

Here's an example from Ubuntu 24.04:

# gettext -d xdg-user-dirs Desktop
Επιφάνεια

Having an Ubuntu-specific customization for the very important "Desktop" keyword causes multiple problems:

- Applications such as mate-panel that have their own localizations for "Desktop" show errors. For example, in Ubuntu MATE, if I go to the Locations > Desktop menu (Τοποθεσίες > Επιφάνεια εργασίας), I'm getting the attached error dialog; this doesn't happen if I restore the correct translation.
- In several cases users will end up with multiple "Desktop" folders, e.g. a user that upgraded from 22.04 to 24.04 who decides to reinitialize his .config (user-dirs.dirs) folder will now get a different Desktop folder.
- The same thing happens in some other languages too, for example in pt_BR.

Please either restore the translation and backport it to 24.04,
or if the idea is to have a "Desktop folder translation that doesn't contain spaces", then please propagate this change to all other projects such as upstream xdg-user-dirs and MATE desktop.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

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

[Alkis Georgopoulos (alkisg)]

After consulting with the fellow that did the translation, I've reverted it on launchpad to match the upstream translation.
It'll probably be included in 25.10.
This issue is now closed.

[Alkis Georgopoulos (alkisg)]

I forgot to mention a workaround, at least for the Greek language.
Run the following command BEFORE the users log in for the first time:

sudo wget https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xdg-user-dirs/+bug/2122199/+attachment/5907871/+files/el_LC_MESSAGES_xdg-user-dirs.mo -O /usr/share/locale-langpack/el/LC_MESSAGES/xdg-user-dirs.mo