[FM Discuss] Translations

Fri Jun 3 06:35:49 PDT 2011

Hi Chris,

> I'd suggest that any system that gets created have the combination of
> ISO codes *and* language names.

Sure, I just wanted to change the labels on the human-readable buttons.
Before I made the buttons, I had no clue that fa was the code for Farsi,
so I figured someone that doesn't read the Latin alphabet wouldn't have
a clue either.

> This would allow browser detection in the backend to provide a better
> user experience when accessing the FM site and allow things like
> detecting browser language in use and showing manuals available in that
> language or similar language groups.  use ISO codes for the
> infrastructure and backend stuff, and the language names for user
> visible parts.

In the mockup, the two-letter codes are still used in the names of
buttons, for example write_en.png for English or write_fa.png for Farsi.

http://www.w3.org/International/tutorials/language-decl/ suggests using
a language attribute on the html tag, for example:
<html lang="en">

rather than a meta element in the document head with the content
attribute set to Content-Language. For example:
<meta http-equiv="Content-Language" content="en,fr,es" />

That page says the Content-Language option is not so widely supported.

> On a slightly related topic it might be interesting to have a
> booksprint/create a manual that talks about language support in browsers
> and on the web, and to help expand the support and use of a language on
> the internet.   We definitely need some help in cleaning up the
> documentation on how to create a firefox localization to help new teams
> get involved and I'd be interested in talking to anyone that wants to
> help with that effort.

Sourcefabric might be able to get involved with that at some point, as
we recommend Firefox for use with all products - so if a user needs to
deploy in a currently unsupported language, we would need to go through
that browser localization process.

Cheers!

Daniel