899468 - Redirect pt-PT to pt-BR

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(support.mozilla.org :: Localization, task, P3)

Description

[Scoobidiver (away)]

The Portuguese locale is not actively maintained (see https://support.mozilla.org/pt-PT/localization) and doesn't have a support forum while the Brazilian one has a better score (see https://support.mozilla.org/pt-BR/localization) and a support forum.
In addition, bug 800880 won't be fixed soon because of its cost.

Redirect pt-PT to pt-BR in order to help more users and get more contributors for pt-BR (same solution as en-US and es).

Comment 1

[Kadir Topal [:atopal]]

We've had this discussion numerous times before, and it all boils down to: Do Portuguese people understand Brazilian Portuguese? So far, the answer has been no.

On one hand, we are giving people English texts right now, which they probably understand even less than English, on the other hand: If we redirect to pt-BR, we are forgoing any chance of building a pt-PT community on SUMO.

I took the opportunity to check what's going on with the pt-PT locale in the rest of the Mozilla universe, and while it's not perfect, it's quite active. 

I'd say that under the given circumstances it would be better to redirect to pt-BR instead of serving English to Portuguese speakers.

I'm cc'ing Ricmacas, who has been contributing to the UI localization of Kitsune lately, and we should also have the locale leaders and reviewers chime in. Rosana, can you reach out to them?

Comment 2

[Rosana Ardila]

I will reach out to the rest and also notify the pt-Br team.

Thanks Scoobi for posting this.

Regards,

Rosana

Comment 3

[Scoobidiver (away)]

(In reply to Kadir Topal [:atopal] from comment #1)
> We've had this discussion numerous times before, and it all boils down to:
> Do Portuguese people understand Brazilian Portuguese? So far, the answer has
> been no.
It's bug 669321 and bug 667404. At that time, there was no support forum in Portuguese, no dedicated Mozilla employee for pt-BR and the top-20 score in pt-PT was acceptable.

> I'd say that under the given circumstances it would be better to redirect to
> pt-BR instead of serving English to Portuguese speakers.
... or serving a pt-PT version not applicable to recent Firefox versions. Only two articles are in correct Portuguese and applicable to the current Firefox version. It's not an help.

Comment 4

[Ricardo Maçãs [:Ricmacas]]

Hello,
The accepted consensus is that due to differences in Firefox UI translation and in technical terms (pt-BR more often derives their words directly from English as opposed to conveying their meaning in existing Portuguese words, or sometimes, conveying them with different words), a pt-PT translation would of course be better for the Portuguese public (from Portugal).
However, given the impossibility with 2 contributors or so to translate all the articles, and the consequent low motivation associated with these numbers, even I would consider the possibility of merging these two.
I find it faulty that the untranslated articles always default to English. What about other Portuguese locales? What are we doing with Portuguese from Angola, Mozambique and others currently? Certainly these aren't major locales (given that they are African countries with relatively small penetration of Internet connection/computers), but what about Galician, for example, which is basically Portuguese written in a Spanish twist (a bit more complicated though, since almost every word changes ever so slightly)?
I would suggest firstly that we consider the option of defaulting the untranslated articles to versions translated in the same language for other locales. This would make pt-PT articles default to pt-BR or pt-XX where XX is any other available locale of Portuguese; and I'm sure this would be useful in other languages. In fact, it might be quite useful in en-UK already, since articles which are not localized are understandable by the target locale.
In case that doesn't work, I could try to script something to translate Brazilian-specific technical expressions and UI strings into Portuguese for Portugal. The remaining Brazilian expressions (the ones not technical) are well understood by Portuguese (from Portugal), with few exceptions which could be easily introduced as well. Suggestions on how this could work are appreciated, as is some help in programming this solution in case this is the option chosen. 
Lastly, and in case all the other options are deemed unsuitable, maybe we could consider deleting pt-PT. I still believe that any of the other solutions I gave before could stimulus the pt-PT community and that they would not compromise the understandability of the KB.

Comment 5

[Scoobidiver (away)]

(In reply to Ricardo Maçãs [Ricmacas] from comment #4)
> I find it faulty that the untranslated articles always default to English.
It's bug 800880 as stated in comment 0. But it will cost several days of developers (pt-PT accounts for less than 0.5% of installed Firefox and pt-BR for 6% - source: https://input.mozilla.org/?product=Firefox) while this one costs nothing.

> What about other Portuguese locales? What are we doing with Portuguese from Angola,
> Mozambique and others currently?
There is no Portuguese from Africa (see http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/all/) if the first preferred language of the browser is set to pt, they will be redirected to pt-BR (see bug 669321 comment 4).

> what about Galician, for example, which is basically Portuguese written in a Spanish
> twist (a bit more complicated though, since almost every word changes ever so
> slightly)?
Galician are served with the English version because there's no locale leader (see https://support.mozilla.org/gl/home). We can do a redirect to Spanish (Galicia is in Spain) as we did for other dialects (see bug 590126, bug 711119, bug 668781, and bug 667204).

Comment 6

[Ricardo Maçãs [:Ricmacas]]

(In reply to Scoobidiver from comment #5)
> leader (see https://support.mozilla.org/gl/home). We can do a redirect to
> Spanish (Galicia is in Spain) as we did for other dialects (see bug 590126,

<Off topic warning>
Reductio ad absurdum: And, if we had to, we could also redirect Québécois (Quebec people) to Canadian English (Quebec is in Canada).
</Off topic warning>

Galician is an recognized language in Spain (alongside others, just like Canada), and is the precursor to modern Portuguese. I'm not sure if there's any correct thing to do with it, but the redirect to Spanish suggestion seems like it would likely favorite our target demographic, which is instructed people who know how to use a computer, and thus must be educated (and have learned Spanish).
However, I'm pretty sure that there's plenty of debate in this issue, just ask a linguist and he would most likely side with a Portuguese merge due to the specifics of the language itself.

Comment 7

[Scoobidiver (away)]

Ricardo for the Galician redirect, please comment in bug 900486.

For languages in countries where English is spoken (Gaelic, Irish, Afrikaans), there's nothing to do even if it isn't maintained as en-US is the fallback language.

Comment 8

[Kadir Topal [:atopal]]

Okay, let's redirect pt-PT to pt-BR then. 

Ricardo, unfortunately we can't translate single words or expressions in articles. We can only translate whole articles.

Comment 9

[Ricardo Maçãs [:Ricmacas]]

You should bring the other pt-PT locale leader to this bug first, IMHO. Rosana might have her/his contact, I was not active in the community when he/she came into the scene.

Comment 10

[Ricky Rosario [:rrosario, :r1cky]]

Based on Comment 9, there is more discussion that needs to happen. Moving to the backlog.

Rosana, please see comment 9.

Comment 11

[Rosana Ardila]

I contacted Luis and asked him to give us his take on this. I'm waiting for his answer or for him to comment on this bug so that we can decide.

Thanks

Comment 12

[Ricky Rosario [:rrosario, :r1cky]]

Q3 is over... => Q4

Comment 13

[Ricky Rosario [:rrosario, :r1cky]]

Moving 2013Q4 bugs to the Future since we didnt care enough about them in 2014Q1.

Comment 14

[vesper]

(CCing Claudio for PT-PT and Marco Aurelio for PT-BR as FYI)

At this stage, we will keep PT-PT available and (manually) add a (templated) note to the articles, pointing users to existing PT-BR articles as an alternative.

As for the alternative/backup fallback languages, it's a bigger discussion to be continued elsewhere.

Comment 15

[Michal Stanke (Mozilla.cz) [:mstanke][:MikkCZ]]

Michal, what was the output of the discussion? Is this still needed, or can we close the bug?

Comment 16

[vesper]

(I see you're in for some bug-spring-cleaning - thank you! I think that's something I should consider in the coming weeks :-))

This is no longer necessary, as we have an awesome community of Portuguese localizers on board for both locales.