Mobile/Projects/Localization

Goals

• Grant user control over language selection within Fennec.
  • [Accomplished in Fx32] Language selection currently controled by Android system preferences, whose availability are determined by OEMs and carriers.
  • Accept-language header for customizing default language selection for delivery of web content.
• Locale breadth: ensure we can support any potential distribution deals without locales being any kind of hurdle or barrier
• Notes from what the competition supports:
  • Opera Mobile supports 40 languages
  • Chrome Mobile supports 31 (as of Apr 2012) and seemingly 38 (trying to find an official source of truth)
  • Google Play store supports 45 localizations
  • Google's default Android localization is into 68 languages (added support for Basque, Bengali, Burmese, Chinese (Hong Kong), Galician, Icelandic, Kannada, Kyrgyz, Macedonian, Malayalam, Marathi, Nepali, Sinhala, Tamil and Telugu in 5.0 Lollipop).
  • OEMs add languages to Android's 52 delivered languages (e.g., Samsung devices have up to 83).
  • Close the competitive gap between us, Chrome, and Opera.

Specifications

• Multi-locale build to include all new locales
• (RTL languages requires support from the Android UI for the likes of Arabic)

Bug Tracking

Full Query

ID	Summary	Priority	Status
521979	[tracking] Choose search plug-ins for localized versions of Fennec	--	RESOLVED
521992	[gl] Choose search plug-ins for Fennec in Galician	--	RESOLVED
551156	[en-CA] New localization: English, Canada	--	RESOLVED
639801	[tracking] Firefox Mobile l10n release trackers	--	RESOLVED
639853	[gl] Fennec release tracker Galician	--	RESOLVED
639855	[gl] Search engine setup for Firefox Mobile for Galician.	--	RESOLVED
700289	map he->iw and id->in in nsLocaleService	P2	RESOLVED
881510	Accept-Language header customization UI for Android	--	RESOLVED
882315	Add en-CA locale to the Fennec multi-locale build	P5	RESOLVED
933315	Firefox for Android doesn't fall back to es-ES when device language set as any other Spanish locale code	--	RESOLVED
934962	Thai font doesn't display on Galaxy S4 on Android 4.2.2	--	RESOLVED
1038667	[xh] Firefox Mobile release tracker Xhosa	--	RESOLVED
1038669	[xh] Search engine setup for Firefox Mobile for Xhosa.	--	RESOLVED
1082209	[br] Firefox Mobile release tracker Breton	--	RESOLVED
1082210	[br] Search engine setup for Firefox Mobile for Breton.	--	RESOLVED
1082212	[eo] Firefox Mobile release tracker Esperanto	--	RESOLVED
1082214	[eo] Search engine setup for Firefox Mobile for Esperanto.	--	RESOLVED
1109078	[sq] Firefox Mobile release tracker Albanian	--	RESOLVED
1109079	[sq] Search engine setup for Firefox Mobile for Albanian.	--	RESOLVED

19 Total; 0 Open (0%); 19 Resolved (100%); 0 Verified (0%);

Android supported

Locales w/repos

Locale	Language	Scheduled
vi	Vietnamese
af	Afrikaans
el	Greek
sw	Swahili
zu	Zulu
gl	Galician	36

Locales sans repos

Locale	Language	Scheduled
bg	Bulgarian
sr	Serbian
tl	Tagalog
rm	Romansh
my	Burmese	37
ky	Kyrgyz
mk	Macedonian
ne-NP	Nepalese
si	Sinhala

Blocked locales

Locale	Language	Scheduled	Repo	Blocks
he	Hebrew		Yes	RTL, Gecko/Java locale code, resources
ar	Arabic		Yes	RTL, resources
am	Amharic		No	RTL, resources
fa	Persian		Yes	RTL

Sans Android support

Locales w/translations

Language	Location	Speakers	ADU's	Scheduled
Ligurian	Italy	505,100	115,000
Norwegian (Nynorsk)	Norway	4,640,000 (East Scandinavian writing system)	14,500
Venda	South Africa	1,064,000	13,500
Xhosa	South Africa	7,817,300	13,500	36
Albanian	Albania	7,436,990	1,200	37
Acholi	Uganda	1,197,000	1,000
Songhay	Mali	~1,100,000	500	37
Upper Sorbian	Germany	~13,490		37
Lower Sorbian	Germany	~13,490		37
Khmer	Cambodia/Thailand	16,124,500	45,000 + 6,500
Uzkeb	Uzbekistan	25,000,000	N/A	37
Azerbaijani	Azerbaijan, Iran, Iraq, Turkey	23,000,000	N/A	37

Locales w/out Fennec translations

Language	Location	Speakers	ADU's	Scheduled
Occitan	France	2,048,310	150,000
Asturian	Spain	550,000	116,000
Ilocano	Philippines	7,016,400	30,000
Kurdish	Iraq	29,960,872	26,000
Urdu	Pakistan	63,431,800	14,500
Tsonga	South Africa	3,669,000	13,500
Bengali (Bangladesh)	Bangladesh	110,000,000	11,000
Bosnian	Bosnia	2,216,000	3,200
Georgian	Georgia/Russia	4,237,710	2,300
Nbedele	Zimbabwe	1,572,800	600
Tswana	Botswana	4,521,700	250
Siswati	Swaziland	2,034,200	<100
Southern Sotho	Lesotho	6,024,000	<50

Locales Included in our multi-locale APK

As of Fx22

• Brazilian Portuguese (pt-BR)
• Chinese (zh-CN)
• Chinese (zh-TW)
• Czech (cs)
• Danish (da)
• Dutch (nl)
• English (en-US)
• Finnish (fi)
• French (fr)
• German (de)
• Italian (it)
• Japanese (ja)
• Korean (ko)
• Norwegian bokmal (nb-NO)
• Polish (pl)
• Portuguese (pt-PT)
• Russian(ru)
• Slovak (sk_SK)
• Spanish (es-ES)

As of Fx23

• Hungarian (hu_HU)
• Turkish(tr)

As of Fx24

• British English (en_BR)
• Catalan (ca_ES)
• Swedish (sv_SE)

As of Fx 25

• Ukranian (uk)
• Irish (ga)
• Romanian (ro)

As of Fx 27

• South African English(en-ZA)
• Thai (th)
• Lithuanian (lt)
• Slovenian (sl)

As of Fx 28

• Estonian (et)

As of Fx 30

• Indonesian (id)
• Spanish (es-MX)
• Spanish (es-AR)
• Malay (ms)
• Belarusian (be)
• Latvian (lv)

As of Fx 31

• Assamese (as)
• Bengali (bn-IN)
• Hindi (hi-IN)
• Gujarati (gu-IN)
• Kannada (kn)
• Maithli (mai)
• Marathi (mr)
• Malayalam (ml)
• Punjabi (pa-IN)
• Oriya (or)
• Tamil (ta)
• Telugu (te)

As of 32

• Icelandic (is)
• Fulah (ff)
• Basque (eu)
• Scottish Gaelic (gd)
• Welsh (cy)
• Armenian (hy-AM)

As of 33

• Kazakh (kk)
• Aragonese (an)
• Frisian (fy-NL)

As of 35

• Breton (br)
• Esperanto (eo)

As of 36

• Galician (gl)
• Xhosa (xh)

As of 37

• Upper Sorbian (hsb)
• Lower Sorbian (dsb)
• Songhay (son)
• Albanian (sq)
• Uzbek (uz)
• Burmese (my)

Quality Criteria

1. User stories must be satisfied
2. Specifications must be met
3. Multi-locale APK size must not exceed the previous release APK size by x% (important for ARMv6 users with less memory than high-end devices)