1586984 - Add empty FTL files to l10n repos to avoid falling back to English

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Mozilla Localizations :: Other, task)

Description

[Francesco Lodolo [:flod]]

In the past 24h I received multiple reports of menus showing up in English (tab context, findbar). Turns out we added a new file, sync.ftl, which is loaded lazily.

MozXULElement.insertFTLIfNeeded("browser/tabContextMenu.ftl");

That's the same context used by other UI files, and explains why we fall back to English. That's an incredibly poor experience for users, especially in a world where we commit to ship any updates, not just complete localizations.

One solution would be to create empty FTL files to avoid the fallback. It's a poor solution, but it's better than the status quo (the proper solution would be bug 1464156).

I have two open questions:

• Do we add all FTL files, or just the ones loaded lazily?
• Do we update all locales? I was thinking of using Pontoon's API, get the locales above a certain threshold, and only add files for those. If a locale is below 60%, for example, it hardly makes sense to add those files.

Comment 1

[Axel Hecht [:Pike]]

Attachment: missing insertIfNeeded files

This is the list of files missing in localizations that get added if needed. Just to have something to think about for starters.

Comment 2

[Axel Hecht [:Pike]]

Attachment: regular ftl files missing in l10n

Comment 3

[Francesco Lodolo [:flod]]

I built a script this morning that looks at all missing FTL files, and ignores locales that are not in Pontoon and below a threshold.

Locales not available in Pontoon (23):
ak, bn-BD, bn-IN, csb, en-ZA, hto, kok, ku, mn, nr, nso, pbb, rw, sah, sat, ss, st, ta-LK, tn, ts, ve, zu

Threshold 70%

Total files to add: 470

Locales below 70% (38):
ace, af, arn, as, bo, brx, cv, frp, fur, gv, ilo, ixl, jiv, ks, lb, lg, lo, lus, mai, meh, mix, mk, my, ny, or, pai, quy, qvi, sc, scn, si, son, sw, tsz, uz, wo, xh, zam

Threshold 80%

Total files to add: 295

Locales below 80% (50):
ace, ach, af, arn, as, ast, bo, brx, bs, cv, frp, fur, ga-IE, gv, hy-AM, ilo, ixl, jiv, km, kn, ks, lb, lg, lo, lus, mai, meh, mix, mk, ml, my, ne-NP, ny, or, pa-IN, pai, quy, qvi, sc, scn, si, son, sw, ta, trs, tsz, uz, wo, xh, zam

Maybe 70% is a good compromise.

Comment 4

[Francesco Lodolo [:flod]]

Slightly adapted plan: add FTL files to locales with more than 70% translated in Pontoon, but ignore files that are clearly stand-alone (i.e. used in a single context, like about:policies or about:support).

The script is running, and I will likely run it again in the future, until we solve the root problem.

I'm also adding a file with the license header, not just an empty file, e.g.
https://hg.mozilla.org/l10n-central/cs/rev/e6ab1b367c1649cc3a019a63e34d856db17b0b9a

Comment 5

[Rob Lemley [:rjl]]

I've modified the Taskcluster L10n repackage jobs for Thunderbird in bug 1779330 to create missing .ftl files automatically. . The code is based on https://github.com/flodolo/fluent-migrations/blob/master/scripts/add_missing_ftl_thunderbird.py; i left out the pieces that query Pontoon for completion status.

The idea is to remove the need to update the l10n-central repositories since you're a finite resource. It should port to mozilla-central easily enough if you think it would be useful.