Adding New Locales for FF 4, Five African Languages Among the Group

The beta release cycle for Firefox 4 is a perfect time for us to add new locales. This week, we added eight more localizations, all of whom are working toward a completed version so they can be included for the upcoming final release. This new group of volunteers has endured a long wait to be included in this process, so many thanks to them for their patience and sticktoitiveness. Perhaps most noteworthy, we added five new African languages, expanding our presence to new highs on the continent. The entire batch of new locales includes Akan, Breton, Bosnian, South African English, Armenian, Luganda, Northern Sotho, and Songhay.

If all the new locales close out their outstanding bugs and perform some testing in time for FF 4′s final release, they will go out as official and final. If they do not complete all the tasks required to fully localize their version, they will be released in beta and keep working to close any open issues. In the very least, they need to translate all strings by the release date.

Here is a pretty rough HTML table for you to see all the new locales. The table shows the locale name, the tracking bug that lists all tasks, and where any users can download language packs or nightly builds. Please click on the tracking bugs to see everything a new locale has to do. Or, download and test some of the builds. These builds use our “l10n-merge” technology that supplants untranslated pieces in the user interface with English strings. It’s never too early to test, so please help if you can.

Lastly, I’ll mention it quickly now and blog more later, but we also added two new locales for the release of Firefox 3.6.9. For that release, you will see Asturian and Scottish Gaelic in beta.