667404 - Forward /pt-PT to /pt-BR

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(support.mozilla.org :: Knowledge Base Software, task)

Description

[Scoobidiver (away)]

As there is no European Portuguese leader, no Verbatim files, few localized articles, forward /pt-PT to /pt-BR.

Comment 1

[Kadir Topal [:atopal]]

I wanted to do this before, but I was told by a Portuguese localizer that pt-PT and pt-BR as sufficiently different so that we should not just combine them. 

On the other hand, I'm pretty sure that even a pt-BR translation is probably better for a Portuguese user than the English version. I'm a bit torn, but I'd leave this out at least until the next MozCamp Europe meeting where I'll lobby for a pt-PT version and get some more feedback on the language issue.

Comment 2

[James Socol [:jsocol, :james]]

(To make this happen, just remove pt-PT from the list of known languages. It'll fallback automatically to pt-BR.)

Comment 3

[chris hofmann]

yeah, ultimately joao and contributors from Portugal should decide what is best here.   It does seem like cloning pt-BR to pt-PT as a baseline might be better, and maybe spark interest in growing new contributors from Portugal to make improvement suggestions.   We would need to find at least one reviewer/approver to set up that system.

joao, any thoughts here?

Comment 4

[João Neves]

Ok, current state is not acceptable. We're aware of that.

Issue: we have two different populations:

up to 40 - will prefer English to pt-BR

over 40 - will prefer pt-BR to English

Any suggestions on how to deal with this?

Long term solution: we're getting a few more people on board for web translation. Is there anyway to get a weekly report of the situation to send to the mailing-list? That would help (feedback is always a great way to inspire/shame ;))

Comment 5

[Kadir Topal [:atopal]]

Hmm, I don't have a solution for the age problem, until Firefox learns to detect your age ;)

But seriously, it looks like the up to 40 population is served already with the current solution. We do show English articles when there is no pt-PT article.

We currently don't have a weekly report. But that should be trivial to set up. And I like that idea. However we do already have a dashboard that shows the current status: https://support.mozilla.com/pt-PT/localization

Joao, what do you think about Chris' idea to clone pt-BR to pt-PT and use that as a baseline for further corrections and updates? That would of course only make sense if we have someone who would be ready to lead pt-PT after the initial cloning.

Comment 6

[João Neves]

Please don't clone pt-BR to pt-PT. Deleting the articles one by one will be painful. And we will have to do it.

What most people don't realize is that pt-BR and pt-PT are more different than most expect. IT-related terms (like mouse: mouse(pt-BR), rato(pt-PT); save: salvar(pt-BR), gravar(pt-PT); file: arquivo(pt-BR), ficheiro(pt-PT)), tense of verbs used and several other details are extremely different and in context useless for a user. Some users might get tips, but there's a reason we never start a pt-PT translation from a pt-BR one - it doesn't save us any time, it's more painful to do.

Comment 7

[Ricardo Maçãs [:Ricmacas]]

I back João Neves' opinion, even though the pt-BR articles could benefit people without any English skills. 
And let's be honest here, people using Firefox in Portugal are probably educated,  because they chose a different browser than IE. Exceptions would possibly be those who were told to install Firefox by family members or friends.
I could volunteer to help translating, but be aware that I'm not available for being a translation leader, even though I'd love to be one... I couldn't handle the long-term commitment!

Comment 8

[chris hofmann]

(In reply to comment #4)
> Ok, current state is not acceptable. We're aware of that.
> 
> Issue: we have two different populations:
> 
> up to 40 - will prefer English to pt-BR
> 
> over 40 - will prefer pt-BR to English
> 

One idea here.  Do we have any sense of the size of these two groups?

I suspect if demographics are the same as other countries with higher internet use that the under 40 population is greater than the over 40 population.

That suggests English to pt-BR might serve more people.

But also compounding this might be if the populations of people seeking help might differ.  Do older generations seek out more help on sites like SUMO than younger generations?   I don't know the answer to questions like that and don't know if we have surveys or profiles of SUMO users that could help guide some answers there.  kadir/djst, any thoughs on if we have that kind of data or could get it?

Although these things would be interesting to know, it sounds like not completely helpful in answering the question here.  It sounds like status quo might be best until we can find more contributors to translate articles to pt-PT.

and re: Ricardo Maçãs comment 7.

It would be great for you to start helping with translation of some top articles.  That is one good thing about SUMO help.  It doesn't require any long term commitments.   The site only gets better with each article translation or updated article.

the dashboard shows that 400,000 user per week could be helped with translation of just the top 4 articles.

Comment 9

[chris hofmann]

link to dashboard
https://support.mozilla.com/pt-PT/localization

Comment 10

[Kadir Topal [:atopal]]

Yeah, that's leave it as it is then. 

Ricardo, helping on SUMO does not mean that you have to spend hours on end every week. The top 20 articles already cover 50% of all visits to the KB, and you can localize them as you find time, no hard deadlines here :) Also, being a locale leader means that you get to decide what's published on SUMO, and you can help others to contribute. It is not an obligation for you to do all the work on your own, and of course you can step down at any time, there is no pressure at all. 

If you are interested, let me know :)

About the demographics on SUMO: unfortunately I have no idea; we don't ask people for any kind of information when they just use the KB, and even in forums we don't ask about their age. But my very unscientific observations suggest that people of all ages use the KB with a tilt towards younger people, because they are: 
a) bigger in total numbers among the user base. 
b) are more likely to search for a solution to their problem instead of asking someone who is "good with computers"

About the dashboard: We currently can't show any locale stats there, we are working on it, and hopefully it will be done by September, but until that's available we are showing en-US stats, because the importance of articles is more or less uniform across languages (we tested that a few times already)

Comment 11

[James Socol [:jsocol, :james]]

(In reply to comment #10)
> Yeah, that's leave it as it is then. 

Does this mean we should not forward pt-PT to pt-BR? If so, feel free to go ahead and WONTFIX this bug.

Comment 12

[Kadir Topal [:atopal]]

Yes, WONTFIXING, since we will obviously not forward pt-PT to pt-BR

Comment 13

[Ricardo Maçãs [:Ricmacas]]

Just a note here:
I believe João's demographic estimate was based on the education of the younger portuguese citizens, which is not comparable to the older ones.
One (easy) way to determine how useful pt-BR could be is to determine the rate of portuguese people who find the support page and leave as soon as they get there, which I believe could be described as the typical behaviour of people who can't speak English when finding an English page (with a considerable error margin though).
This issue is resolved, but I believe that it could be useful to measure how many people (from untranslated locales) visiting SUMO are not helped. And there are methods to determine this indirectly, the same way statistical websites (such as Google) know my gender even though I never told them.