393194 - German Firefox displays the wrong or no language for the language codes (ISO 639-2) wen, hsb and dsb

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Core :: Internationalization, defect)

Description

[René M.]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; de-AT; rv:1.8.1.6) Gecko/20070725 Firefox/2.0.0.6
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; de-AT; rv:1.8.1.6) Gecko/20070725 Firefox/2.0.0.6

On <span xml:lang="wen" lang="wen">bla</wen> the German translation of Firefox (tested with 1.5 and 2.0) gives back the wrong language: "Serbisch" (South-Slavic) instead of "Sorbisch" (West-Slavic), while SeaMonkey 1.1.4 presents the correct language.

For the language code "hsb" both browsers give "Hoch-Sorbisch" as language, while "Obersorbisch" is the correct term.

For the language code "dsb" both browsers don't have a language at all, it should be "Niedersorbisch".

More Information (on German) can be found at http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorbische_Sprachen

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. right click on a word or text marked with <span xml:lang="wen" lang="wen">bla</wen>
2. Choose the properties ("Eigenschaften")
3. Read the value for the key "Text-Sprache"

Comment 1

[Jo Hermans]

In the original (English) languageNames.properties file :

wen = Sorbian
hsb = Upper Sorbian
dsb not present

So for wen and hsb, it's probably a translation error.

The reason that dsb is missing at this moment, is that not all 3-letter codes are supported (ISO-639-2), but all 2-letter codes are (ISO-639-1, IANA registry). There's a general confusion between several different confusing standards and conventions, spelling differences, etc. Even some of the standards contain errors. See bug 178491 comment 3 and below (Sorbian is also mentioned). I think that bug 356038 is the new bug for adding codes.

Comment 2

[Michael Wolf]

To comment#1:
- hsb is "Upper Sorbian" (from: Upper Sorbian hornjoserbšćina (noun) resp. hornjoserbsce (adverb))
- dsb is "Lower Sorbian" (from: Lower Sorbian dolnoserbšćina (noun) resp. dolnoserbski (adverb))
- wen is the obsolete code (relating to ISO 639)meaning "Wendish", an old collective name for all Sorbian tribes)
wen was originally the sole code, but Upper Sorbian and Lower Sorbian are different languages.
The difference in use between hsb and dsb is that there are Mozilla programs for Upper Sorbian, for Lower Sorbian not yet. I'm the localizer for Upper Sorbian. but the translations are not official. Here is my web site www.sorbzilla.de
I've been localizing since Mozilla Suite 0.98 and had to use wen in the first times. 
There is, however, another standard (I forgot the name) which uses "wen" for Upper Sorbian and a similar with w** (I don't know the code, unfortunately) for Lower Sorbian. hsb and dsb are ISO-639-2. There was never a 2-letter coder for the Sorbian languages, they didn't exist in ISO-639-1.

Comment 3

[René M.]

Comment #1: Five year old requests scare me. Really.

Comment #2: Is wen really deprecated? I used to live in a region where hsb and dsb are pretty much mixed up (makes it even harder to learn) and therefor thought it would be a good idea to choose it whenever there's a text that "may contain elements of both languages".

General question: Who's the most fitting target person to moan about fixing the German files?

Comment 4

[Michael Wolf]

To comment #3:
Yes, I think so. wen was originally iso-639, later were accepted hsb for Upper Sorbian and dsb for Lower Sorbian. SIL (=Summer Institue for Linguistics) had used wen for Upper Sorbian and wee for Lower Sorbian and the MARC Standards (http://www.loc.gov/marc/)code was originally wen only for both Sorbian languages. But both SIL and MARC changed the codes to those one of iso: hsb and hsb. (MARC since 2003, http://www.loc.gov/marc/langchg.html table 3). For SIL I have to look for it once more). If wen is really obsolete I don't know but it's a fact now that it isn't more sufficient to use wen only although dsb is obviously used less than hsb. But soon there will be a Lower Sorbian Wikipedia for instance where the separate code is necessary. In the Mozilla programs is hsb only at the moment but may be that there will be a Lower Sorbian Firefox in the future.

To your general question: the file languageNames.properties is a part of the language pack. For the German Firefox is Abdulkadir Topal competent, at www.firefox-browser.de. And I have just seen that really Lower Sorbian (dsb, "Niedersorbisch") is missing, hsb is contained with the wrong translation "Hoch-Sorbisch" instead of "Obersorbisch" and wen as "Serbisch" instead of "Sorbisch". "Serbisch" has the code "sr" and is another Slavic language. So if you described it in your bug description. I've never seen it because I don't use the German Firefox.
Another thing is that there is still a file language.properties in the res folder of the installation folder. There is hsb only. dsb and wen are missing. 

You are living in a region where both Sorbian languages are spoken, I'm sure you mean transitional dialects. Are you a Sorb?

Comment 5

[Michael Wolf]

Correcting to comment #4:
Must be: So *as* you described it in your bug description, instead of So *if* you described in your bug description

Completing: When hsb and hsb had come as new code I decided to let "wen" included in the languageNames.properties because there were still langwende.jar language packs in use in those days, so I kept the code for compatibility. in the languageNames.properties file. wen is IMHO a relict now.

Comment 6

[Michael Wolf]

To comment #5:
I should be more careful :-). Must be "hsb and dsb" and not "hsb and hsb"

Comment 7

[Tyler Downer [He/Him]]

This bug was reported on Firefox 2.x or older, which is no longer supported and will not be receiving any more updates. I strongly suggest that you update to Firefox 3.6.3 or later, update your plugins (flash, adobe, etc.), and retest in a new profile. If you still see the issue with the updated Firefox, please post here. Otherwise, please close as RESOLVED > WORKSFORME
http://www.mozilla.com
http://support.mozilla.com/kb/Managing+profiles
http://support.mozilla.com/kb/Safe+mode

Comment 8

[Michael Wolf]

(In reply to comment #7)
> This bug was reported on Firefox 2.x or older, which is no longer supported and
> will not be receiving any more updates. I strongly suggest that you update to
> Firefox 3.6.3 or later

Language code for Lower Sorbian (dsb) is still missing in file languageNames.properties of Fx 3.6.3, both in German Firefox and in English Firefox. This causes that - after installing the spelling dictionary for Lower Sorbian - dsb is shown instead of Niedersorbisch resp. Lower Sorbian. 

See also bug https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=535422

In languageNames.properties following entry should be added:

dsb=Niedersorbisch (for German Firefox) resp.
dsb=Lower Sorbian (for English Firefox)

Comment 9

[Simon Montagu :smontagu]

'dsb' was added in bug 535422 and the changes from "Serbisch" to "Sorbisch" and from "Hoch-Sorbisch" to "Obersorbisch" were made in bug 445017.