426853 - Merge locales nb-NO and nn-NO in SUMO

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(support.mozilla.org :: General, defect)

Description

[Håvard Mork]

nb-NO and nn-NO are both small locales, and both are equally official languages in Norway. We'd like to propose to merge the nb-NO and nn-NO locales in SUMO in order to increase the amount of translated articles for the norwegian SUMO(s).

Rationale:
-----
Let me point out that the differences between nb-NO and nn-NO languages are minor. Readers of each of the locales can understand each other.

As far as I can see, there are only a few problems:

1. The united "norwegian" SUMO would need to contain some articles in nb-NO language, and other articles in nn-NO, in order to be useful. This must be enforced by approvers.

2. Search results may be impaired (but we can live with that).

We don't want to repeat Wikipedia's "mistake", which separates nb-NO and nn-NO versions, with now 5x more nb-NO articles. The norwegian state broadcasting company (NRK) successfully shares nb-NO and nn-NO articles on their front page.

----

So I suggest:
- Delete nn-NO from SUMO with all translated resources (there should be little)
- Make all nn-NO article requests redirect to nb-NO, so that in-product help will work properly
- Rename "Norwegian bokmål" to simply "Norwegian".

Is this doable?

Comment 1

[Axel Hecht [:Pike]]

I don't get problem 1, could you detail on that?

David, what do you think?

Comment 2

[Axel Hecht [:Pike]]

PS: this might be interesting for other intelligible languages, too.

Comment 3

[Majken Connor [:Kensie]]

(In reply to comment #1)
> I don't get problem 1, could you detail on that?
> 
> David, what do you think?
> 

I think what he's saying in problem 1 is that we'd need to make sure it's mixed content and not simply one locale takes it over and there's nothing in the other dialect.

Comment 4

[Håvard Mork]

Connor, you're right. I expressed myself vaguely. What I meant is that a "pan-norwegian" SUMO would have to allow contributed articles in both languages, and approvers would have to protect those that already are translated to nn-NO from being hijacked by nb-NO.

According to wikipedia (http://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nynorsk), nn-NO is written by approx. 10-15% of the population. There are laws in Norway that require government(-owned) agencies to publish 25% of all information in nn-NO, so the solution suggested here is not new.

This is a politically sensitive topic, but we really don't want to give an inferior SUMO to the nn-NO user base.

Comment 5

[David Tenser [:djst]]

Håvard, what should be the language code for this merged language? We need to make sure we're using one code for all content to avoid problems with search (what you're describing in #2).

Comment 6

[Håvard Mork]

Language code should preferrably be just "no", which is also the language code being used on MozEU. 

However, if there is much work in changing language code, I suggest to keep "nb-NO" as it is now. (Only the language name needs to be changed, into "Norwegian"). I am more worried about your workload now before RC1, than what code is shown in the address bar for norwegian users.

Let me emphasize that what I imply by "to merge the locales":
* keep nb-NO (but possibly rename the locale code to "NO"), and 
* delete nn-NO with all its resources' (since it has no localized resources of value to date).

Comment 7

[David Tenser [:djst]]

I tried to google for this and found "no" to be an acceptable language code for generic Norwegian. 

The only thing I'm not sure of is how we deal with this is the support links coming from Firefox 3. Will they be using "/nb-NO/" and "/nn-NO/" in their URLs? If so, we need to come up with a solution that directs that to the generic "/no/".

Comment 8

[Axel Hecht [:Pike]]

Yes, the support links as well as other in-product links will come in with the original locale code.

Coming to think of it, what do we do for ja-JP-mac?

Comment 9

[Nelson Ko [:nkoth]]

I was told the Japanese locale is in fact 2 different locales and that is the way Firefox is built in Japan, unless things have changed.

Comment 10

[Nelson Ko [:nkoth]]

We need to do this in 3 steps. First to create the no locale, and then to port
all nb-NO documents to no, before redirecting/renaming/removing any locales.

The porting can be manual (remember to approve the article after changing the
language!), but let me know if I should submit an IT bug to do a SQL.

In the meantime, the name of nb-NO has been changed to Norwegian as per comment #6 as a possible thing to do.

First step: Creation of no committed in r12149.  Will require after push setting of allowed langs in
tiki-admin.php?locale=en-US&page=i18n, and import of new no language file in tiki-imexport_languages.php

Comment 11

[Nelson Ko [:nkoth]]

no locale is created

Now: port nb-NO docuents have to be ported to no, i.e. just change the language, but remember to approve the articles after changing the language.

Comment 12

[Håvard Mork]

Looks good.
All nb-NO documents have been transferred to 'no' locale, and approved.

There should now be left:
- One nb-NO article ("***Sideinformasjon").
- Several nn-NO help articles, which should have dates identical to their import-date.

The nb-NO/nn-NO translation teams will now, separately from this bug, agree on a linguistic norm that is acceptable for both, and change the translations as appropriate.

Can the interface translations be easily changed from nb-NO into 'no'? If so, please do that.

You are free to delete any remaining nn-NO/nb-NO articles and interface translations.

Comment 13

[David Tenser [:djst]]

So to clarify, what we need to do is:

1 Move the UI translations in nb-NO to no.
2 Remove the nb-NO and nn-NO locales
3 Change the .htaccess rules so the above locales point to no
 
Nelson, can you take care of this?

In the meantime, Håvard and the Mozilla-NO team, you can just keep working on the "no" locale. 

Thanks!

Comment 14

[David Tenser [:djst]]

(In reply to comment #8)
> Coming to think of it, what do we do for ja-JP-mac?
> 

That's bug 434483 (we will remove the ja-JP-mac locale from SUMO, per discussion with Dynamis).

Comment 15

[Håvard Mork]

David's list is correct.
Step [1] (Move the UI translation in nb-NO to no) can be skipped.

We do not need to transfer the UI translation, as we will be able to do the translation again, with little effort.

Comment 16

[David Tenser [:djst]]

Thanks for the update Håvard! So, all that needs to be done here is:

1 Remove the nb-NO and nn-NO locales
2 Change the .htaccess rules so the above locales point to no

Comment 17

[Nelson Ko [:nkoth]]

htaccess edited in r13869. need deploy on next push.

Comment 18

[Nelson Ko [:nkoth]]

merged into production htaccess.dist in r14700

Comment 19

[Nelson Ko [:nkoth]]

merged into 1.1 branch in r14921

Comment 20

[Håvard Mork]

thank you, Nelson!

Redirects from nb-NO and nn-NO tested to work correctly.
Article editing seem to be OK, too.