1506941 - Change accept languages for Ukrainian locale

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Mozilla Localizations :: uk / Ukrainian, enhancement)

Description

[Artem Polivanchuk]

Please change the redirection language for Ukrainian SUMO website from Russian to English.

When the article is not translated into Ukrainian language users are redirected to its Russian version.
Even though the Russian language is still widely used and understandable in Ukraine, it would be better to switch redirection to the original English version of the article.

This is also related to the current active implementation of the national language support by the government and many local communities.

The main point is that users who already use the software and websites in the Ukrainian language would rather like to have English instead of Russian version.

The possibility of switching to the Russian website is easily accessible.

Thank you!

Comment 1

[Paul [:pmac] McLanahan]

We don't currently do any location detection for language selection. All we can do is go by the list of languages sent to us by the browser, which are configurable in browser settings by each user. If Ukranian users are being redirected to the Russian translation I believe it's because they have Russian in their preferred language settings ahead of English. Adding Geolocation by IP address is possible but error prone (location often doesn't mean much for language of an individual user) and often changes by region rather than country globally.

If you can provide an example URL where this is happening I can do some testing, but I believe the above is what's happening. I'm sure there's an article on SUMO that can help people change their preferred language settings if they would really prefer English over Russian.

Comment 2

[Artem Polivanchuk]

I tested it in Firefox and found out that the website doesn't rely on the language preferences in the browser.
When changing the language priority in browser settings and using Ukrainian UI, the website is always returning the article in English if it was not translated yet.

I tested it in the following article which has a Russian translation and doesn't have Ukrainian:
https://support.mozilla.org/uk/kb/containers?as=u&utm_source=inproduct

But initially, I've got this issue in Thunderbird.
Thunderbird doesn't have language preferences.
For example, when you open Menu > Help > What's new - the article opens in Russian, despite Ukrainian OS and Thunderbird.

Comment 3

[Artem Polivanchuk]

Since this issue is reproduced in Thunderbird only and there are no any redirection settings on the SUMO side, probably this bug should be addressed to the Thunderbird?

Comment 4

[vesper]

Hi Artem,

Thank you for reporting this. Yes, it seems to me that the issue is connected with the way Thunderbird (the client) handles Ukrainian.

The Support site (https://support.mozilla.org/uk/products/thunderbird) is accessible in Ukrainian without any redirects to Russian, at least from what I could test.

The fallback language for content missing in Ukrainian is English (as a default for all languages not set up otherwise). If you want this to change, please state a reason and then we can update https://github.com/mozilla/kitsune/blob/master/kitsune/wiki/config.py as necessary.

Comment 5

[Artem Polivanchuk]

Hi vesper,

I wanted someone from Thunderbird to take a look at this issue, so changed the Component of the bug from support.mozilla.org to Thunderbird.

As I mentioned in my comment #2
> Thunderbird doesn't have language preferences.
> For example, when you open Menu > Help > What's new - the article opens in Russian, despite Ukrainian OS and Thunderbird.

The issue is reproduced within Thunderbird client only and is not related to the normal website opened in the browser.

Thanks!

Comment 6

[Jorg K (CEST = GMT+2)]

Andrei?

Comment 7

[Andrei [:sancus]]

This is probably because, for the Ukranian version, intl.accept_languages is "uk, ru, en-us, en" in Thunderbird by default. The Ukrainian version of Thunderbird considers "ru" to be a higher priority fallback than "en-us". We don't select language for the user when redirecting to SUMO, we redirect directly to https://support.mozilla.org/kb/article-name and leave it up to SUMO to pick the language. And SUMO uses the browser's Accept-Languages. If I had to guess, this is also Firefox's default. If it's not, however, we may want to consider changing it, but I assume this is set as part of the build process when doing builds for different languages. It would be odd if we do this differently than Firefox for some reason, but I don't know much about it.

Comment 8

[Jorg K (CEST = GMT+2)]

Here, right?
https://dxr.mozilla.org/l10n-central/source/uk/toolkit/chrome/global/intl.properties#33
33 intl.accept_languages=uk, ru, en-us, en

That's a toolkit preference, so why would FF behave any different? Anyway, this should got to Localizations::uk if they want to fix this.

Comment 9

[Andrei [:sancus]]

Yup, that looks like it. So yeah, if it's toolkit, and you download a Ukrainian version of Thunderbird and one of Firefox they should behave exactly the same for this. If you have an English version of Firefox and just add Ukrainian to your Accept Languages or switch to it then yeah, it won't fallback to Russian, of course.

Comment 10

[Artem Polivanchuk]

So changing the intl.accept_languages would resolve the Thunderbird behaviour?
Adding Francesco to take a look...

Comment 11

[Francesco Lodolo [:flod]]

If you don't want Russian to be in the list of accept languages, you can simply remove it, and make it "ru, en-US, en". And yes, both Firefox and Thunderbird behave the same way when it comes to Accept Language.

> When changing the language priority in browser settings and using Ukrainian UI, the website is always returning the article in English if it was not translated yet.

You should test Firefox on a clean profile, created with an Ukrainian build.

Comment 12

[Artem Polivanchuk]

Thank you all for help!
I changed the list of accept languages in toolkit:
https://hg.mozilla.org/l10n-central/uk/rev/2057edb7ff1e

Will test it in Thunderbird Beta.