Firefox L10n Report (Aurora 37)

Jeff Beatty

0

Hello localizers!
Thank you all for your great work with Firefox 35 and 36. Here’s an outline of what is currently in Aurora this cycle (37) and what we accomplished together last cycle:

This cycle (Fx37) — 13 Jan. – 24 Feb.

Key dates:
– Beta sign-offs for new locales must be complete by 2 Feb.
– Beta sign offs must be completed before 9 Feb.
– Aurora sign offs must be completed before 23 Feb.
– Firefox 36 releases 24 Feb.

Features:
– Approximately 97 new string changes were made to Aurora desktop, 20 for Aurora mobile exclusively (unshared).
– 37% of the desktop strings changes are in devtools. 46% are strings that need to be removed from your repo. The rest are related to mixed content, search UI, and mirrored tabs. (see https://wiki.mozilla.org/Features/Release_Tracking#Likely_in_Firefox_37 for more info).
– 60% of the mobile string changes are related to syncing your Firefox account. 10% of the mobile string changes are related to password security. The rest include the home page and pref tracking protection (see https://wiki.mozilla.org/Mobile/Roadmap#Firefox_37_.28Aurora.29 ).

Notes:
Please remember that sign offs are a critical piece to the cycle and mean that you approve and can vouch for the work you’re submitting for shipment.

Last cycle — 1 Dec. – 12 Jan.

Noteworthy accomplishments:
– 62% of all locales shipped Firefox 35 on desktop updates on time. Congratulations to everyone who signed off and shipped this last cycle! This is an 8% decrease in locale coverage between Firefox 34 and Firefox 35.
– 76% of all locales shipped Fennec 35 on time. Congratulations to everyone who signed off and shipped this last cycle! This is a 1% decrease in locale coverage between Fennec 34 and Fennec 35!
– The Breton (br) and Esperanto (eo) teams launched their localizations of Fennec with Fennec 35. Please reach out to them with your congratulations!

Thank you to everyone for all of your dedication and hard work this last sprint. As always, if you note anything missing in these reports, please let me know.

Firefox L10n Report (cycles 35 & 36)

Jeff Beatty

0

Hello localizers!

Thank you all for your great work with Firefox 34 and 35. Here’s an outline of what is currently in Aurora this cycle (36) and what we accomplished together last cycle:

This cycle (Fx35) — 1 Dec. – 12 Jan.

Key dates:
– Beta sign-offs for new locales must be complete by 22 Dec.
– Beta sign offs must be completed before 29 Dec.
– Aurora sign offs must be completed before 12 Jan.
– Firefox 34 releases 13 Jan.
Features:
– Approximately 192 new string changes were made to Aurora desktop, 39 for Aurora mobile exclusively (unshared).
– 40% of the desktop strings changes are strings or files that need to be removed from your repos. 8% of all changes are related to Loop. 40% of all string changes are in devtools (see https://wiki.mozilla.org/Features/Release_Tracking#Likely_in_Firefox_36 for more info).
– 28% of the mobile string changes are related to Do Not Track. 15% of the mobile string changes are related to Content Security Policy. The rest include home page, Firefox Accounts, and preferences (see https://wiki.mozilla.org/Mobile/Roadmap#Firefox_36_.28Aurora.29 ).

Notes:
Please remember that sign offs are a critical piece to the cycle and mean that you approve and can vouch for the work you’re submitting for shipment.

Last cycle — 13 Oct. – 1 Dec.

Noteworthy accomplishments:
– 70% of all locales shipped Firefox 34 on desktop updates on time. Congratulations to everyone who signed off and shipped this last cycle! This is an 10% decrease in locale coverage between Firefox 33 and Firefox 34.
– 77% of all locales shipped Fennec 34 on time. Congratulations to everyone who signed off and shipped this last cycle! This is a 3% increase in locale coverage between Fennec 33 and Fennec 34!

Thank you to everyone for all of your dedication and hard work this last sprint. As always, if you note anything missing in these reports, please let me know.

Firefox L10n Report (cycles 34 & 35)

Jeff Beatty

1

Hello localizers!

Thank you all for your great work with Firefox 33 and 34. Here’s an outline of what is currently in Aurora this cycle (35) and what we accomplished together last cycle:

This cycle (Fx35) — 13 Oct – 24 Nov

Key dates:
– Beta sign-offs for new locales must be complete by 3 Nov.
– Beta sign offs must be completed before 10 Nov.
– Aurora sign offs must be completed before 24 Nov.
– Firefox 34 releases 25 Nov.
Features:
– Approximately 160 new string changes were made to Aurora desktop, 57 for Aurora mobile exclusively (unshared).
– 54% of the desktop strings changes are strings or files that need to be removed from your repos. 25% of all changes are related to Loop. 19% of all string changes are related to session restore and profiles. 13% of all string changes are in devtools (see https://wiki.mozilla.org/Features/Release_Tracking#Likely_in_Firefox_35 for more info).
– 23% of the mobile string changes are related to providing user feedback. The rest include screencasting, and preferences (see https://wiki.mozilla.org/Mobile/Roadmap#Firefox_35_.28Aurora.29 ).
Notes:
Please remember that sign offs are a critical piece to the cycle and mean that you approve and can vouch for the work you’re submitting for shipment.

Last cycle — 1 Sept. – 13 Oct.

Noteworthy accomplishments:
– 80% of all locales shipped Firefox 33 on desktop updates on time. Congratulations to everyone who signed off and shipped this last cycle! This is an 10% increase in locale coverage between Firefox 32 and Firefox 33! Thank you to everyone involved in making this possible; it’s the highest update percentage we’ve seen in months!
– 74% of all locales shipped Fennec 33 on time. Congratulations to everyone who signed off and shipped this last cycle! This is an 1% decrease in locale coverage between Fennec 32 and Fennec 33!
– The Azerbaijani (az) team launched their first localization of Firefox desktop! Please contact the team to congratulate them on this massive accomplishment, and feel free to tweet all about!
– The Aragonese (an), Kazakh (kk), and Frisian (fy-NL) teams launched their first localizations of Fennec! Please contact the teams to congratulate them on this massive accomplishment, and feel free to tweet all about!
– Both the BBC and The Economist reported about the incredible efforts of the Mozilla l10n community, and featured interviews from Ibrahima Sarr and myself.

Thank you to everyone for all of your dedication and hard work this last sprint. As always, if you note anything missing in these reports, please let me know.

Firefox L10n Report (cycles 33 & 34)

Jeff Beatty

1

Hello localizers!

Thank you all for your great work with Firefox 32 and 33. Here’s an outline of what is currently in Aurora this cycle (34) and what we accomplished together last cycle:

This cycle (Fx34) — 2 September – 14 October

Key dates:
– Beta sign offs must be completed before 29 September.
– Aurora sign offs must be completed before 13 October.
– Firefox 33 releases 14 October.

Features:
– Approximately 574 new string changes were made to Aurora desktop, 136 for Aurora mobile exclusively (unshared).
– 21% of the desktop changes are strings or files that need to be removed from your repos. 13% of all string changes are in devtools. The rest cover changes in Private Browsing, mixed content blocking, Get User Media, Loop video & voice calling (see https://wiki.mozilla.org/Features/Release_Tracking#Likely_in_Firefox_34 ).
– 21% of the mobile string changes are related to device storage dialogues. The rest include developments in tab mirroring, guest browsing, among others (see https://wiki.mozilla.org/Mobile/Roadmap#Firefox_34:_.28Beta.29 ).

Notes:
Please remember that sign offs are a critical piece to the cycle and mean that you approve and can vouch for the work you’re submitting for shipment. I will be following this report with an email to the dev-l10n list regarding some changes to the l10n sign-off schedule, specifically related to versions of Firefox in the Beta channel.

Last cycle — 10 June – 21 July

Noteworthy accomplishments:

– 70% of all locales shipped Firefox 32 updates on time. Congratulations to everyone who signed off and shipped this last cycle! This is an 2% increase in locale coverage between Firefox 31 and Firefox 32! Together, let’s aim to raise that percentage to 80% for Firefox 33! So far, we’re at 65% signed off!
– 75% of all locales shipped Fennec 32 on time. Congratulations to everyone who signed off and shipped this last cycle! This is an 11% decrease in locale coverage between Firefox 31 and Firefox 32! Together, let’s aim to raise that percentage to 80% for Firefox 33! So far, we’re at 68% signed off!
– The Armenian, Basque, Fulah, Icelandic, Scottish Gaelic and Welsh teams launched their first localizations of Fennec! These are the first locales to enjoy launching their work, thanks specifically to the new language switching piece in Fennec 32. Please contact the teams to congratulate them on this massive accomplishment, and feel free to tweet all about!
– The Lower Sorbian team has launched their first localization of Firefox desktop! Please contact the team to congratulate them on this massive accomplishment, and feel free to tweet all about!

Awesome l10n contributor: Biraj Karmakar

Jeff Beatty

5

Part of a series similar to the Awesome L10n Communities series where individual contributors are spotlighted for their efforts.

Biraj Karmakar biraj

Nationality: Indian
Languages: Bengali, English, Hindi
Background: Been a Mozillian for four years. Starting at the beginning of his university studies four years ago. Was recruited by Runa to localize Thunderbird. Studying Computer Science Engineering at West Bengal University of Technology in his final year.
Role in L10n community: I have started working with mozilla as a translator. But now I am locale owner. Driving product l10n for Indian Bengali.

Projects you’re currently working on:
Firefox desktop, Firefox OS, Firefox for Android, previously on Thunderbird, Webmaker, and SUMO.

How did you get started with the Mozilla project?

One day, arrbee (Runa) asked me if I was interested in Mozilla Thunderbird translation or not. So, I told her that I was really interested to translate the Thunderbird and I began right away.

What have been some of the biggest challenges to reviving your localization effort?

There were technical barriers to entry for people to get involved because bn-IN was not hosted on Pootle. Training localizers has also been a challenge. Language differences among community were a challenge.

What have been some of your biggest successes?

At last Firefox Aurora 27 came after Firefox 16 and Bengali India page was been re-enabled. L10n sprints have been a very helpful tool to update and maintain Firefox desktop localization. One of these last year, in particular, was very helpful in this area.

How do you help your team find new L10n contributors?

Generally, in every event in my region, I take a session on localization and introduce the participants how to do localization in their languages. Talking to people at all events I attend and encouraging people to get involved. I try to encourage them to get involved in multiple areas of Mozilla, but specifically to start with l10n and I mentor them through the process of getting started with l10n.

What’s your philosophy/method on mentoring new contributors?

First of all, I give them some example about localization, like mobile phone operating system.
Then ask them why it is needed. After hearing their answer I discuss its importance. I give a small presentation on localization. After that, I give a hands-on session how to do localization .
I tell some rules and regulations which have to followed at the time of localization.

If you could identify several best practices that have helped you to become a successful Mozilla localizer, what would they be?

  1. I don’t use the machine translating system. Only use MT for specific purposes, like terminology lookup, instead of sentences. And even then, I use it for inspiration, not for the concrete term. Example : খাতা is wrong for “File” word . We have to use “ফাইল” for “File” word.
  2. I like Pootle’s error checking system which helps me to check silly mistakes.
  3. Also I like Pootle’s string auto suggestion system which helps me to save my time for translating similar strings.
  4. For translation, I always use the Bengali keyboard layout.
  5. Look to knowledgeable people for help.

What are you most looking forward to accomplishing this year?

Firefox OS  and Firefox for Android.

Five things you may not know about me:

  1. I’m a Web Developer (with 2 apps in Firefox OS Marketplace).
  2. I also work on SUMO, Webmaker, and QA.
  3. I’m a good mentor.
  4. I’m a nice person :-)
  5. I have a photography business and enjoy photo editing and graphic design.

 

 

Firefox L10n Report (cycles 32 & 33)

Jeff Beatty

0

Hello localizers!

Thank you all for your great work with Firefox 31 and 32. Here’s an outline of what is currently in Aurora this cycle (33) and what we accomplished together last cycle:

This cycle (Fx33) — 22 July – 1 September

Key dates:
– Beta sign offs must be completed before 25 August.
– Aurora sign offs must be completed before 1 September.
– Firefox 30 releases 2 September.

Features:
– Approximately 204 new string changes were made to Aurora desktop, 34 for Aurora mobile exclusively (unshared).
– 11% of the desktop strings changes are strings or files that need to be removed from your repos. 39% of all string changes are in devtools. The rest cover changes in key name warning messages, the Context Menu toolbar, and others. (see https://wiki.mozilla.org/Features/Release_Tracking#Likely_in_Firefox_33 ). 6% are about getusermedia.
– 30% of the mobile string changes are for privacy settings (private browsing, clearing private data, etc.) The rest include Firefox Account and home page preferences (see https://wiki.mozilla.org/Mobile/Roadmap#Firefox_33_.28Aurora.29 ).

Notes:
Please remember that sign offs are a critical piece to the cycle and mean that you approve and can vouch for the work you’re submitting for shipment.

Because nearly 50% of all 89 locales have not regularly signed off, and thus not shipping up-to-date localizations, I will begin contacting those teams this cycle to evaluate whether they can come up-to-date in a short amount of time, or if they need to be removed from the public Firefox release page ( https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/all/ ).

Last cycle — 10 June – 21 July

Noteworthy accomplishments:
– 68% of all locales shipped Firefox 31 updates on time. Congratulations to everyone who signed off and shipped this last cycle! This is an 1% decrease in locale coverage between Firefox 30 and Firefox 31!
– 86% of all locales shipped Fennec 31 on time. Congratulations to everyone who signed off and shipped this last cycle! This is an 2% decrease in locale coverage between Firefox 30 and Firefox 31!
– The Assamese, Bengali (India), Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Maithili, Malayalam, Marathi, Oriya, Punjabi, Tamil, and Telegu teams launched their first localizations of Fennec! These 12 Indic locales represent the largest number of new locales that have been shipped in a single Fennec release. Please contact the team to congratulate them on this massive accomplishment, and feel free to tweet all about!
– The Upper Sorbian team has launched their first localization of Firefox desktop! Please contact the team to congratulate them on this massive accomplishment, and feel free to tweet all about!

Thank you to everyone for all of your dedication and hard work this last sprint. As always, if you note anything missing in these reports, please let me know.

Translation quality at Mozilla

Jeff Beatty

4

Measuring translation quality is a shared priority

Part of what makes Mozilla projects so unique is the involvement of the community. Our community prides themselves on being experts in the Web, Mozilla, and all of Mozilla’s products. Thus, delivering high quality localizations of Mozilla products to users is not only a priority for the l10n-drivers, but one that is close to the community’s heart.

Currently, Mozilla has no criteria-based framework for evaluating a localization/translation’s accuracy or quality. Determining how to evaluate translation quality is a very difficult task because language itself is very flexible and subjective. Critical to creating a successful framework for evaluating translation quality is including elements of a project’s scope as well as the most objective pieces of language, such as orthography, grammar, and corporate style guide. A translation quality assessment framework would need to be flexible, robust, interoperable, and easy for graders to use. Developing such a framework is difficult, but I believe we’ve experienced a breakthrough!

Background of the MQM standard: Mozilla pilot projects

Translation Studies researchers from Brigham Young University (along with other North American and European organizations) set out to create a translation quality standard that would be flexible enough to accomodate project specifications and the needs of individual langauges. The Multidimensional Quality Metric (MQM) framework was born!

The MQM framework allows an organization to identify their highest priorities in assessing the translation quality of a specific project, or series of projects. The framework’s issue types are determined by the project’s organization. Graders for the project’s translations are recruited and trained on the meaning of these issue types and the process of grading a translation according to the selected issue type framework. Graders spend between 30-60 minutes per day marking the translation errors they find and categorizing them by issue type. The translation is then assigned a “score” according to the combined grades issued by the graders.

Delphine and I collaborated with these researchers to create MQM evaluation sprints for Firefox and Firefox OS localizations. Together, we found language and subject matter experts from within the university and the community to participate in these sprints. There were a total of three sprints organized over the last six months, each evaluating different languages and utilizing a variety of issue types. Participants were involved both virtually and in a physical space at Brigham Young University and were able to collaborate closely using IRC. Each individual grader evaluated between 400 – 4,000 strings in a single week!

Results of those projects

The results from these sprints were very positive. Localization teams were able to receive specific, actionable feedback on where their translations could be improved. This feedback was organized by issue type and called out specific strings as needed correction in one or more of the issue type categories. Some teams, like the French l10n team, were able to act immediately on that feedback and incorporated into their Firefox OS localization.

Community perception of MQM

Surveying the members of the community concerning their experience with the MQM framework returned very positive results. Generally speaking, localizers enjoyed how thorough the framwork’s definition was for the sprints and felt that the process was easy to understand. Many felt that the experience was valuable to their l10n work and were in favor of the l10n-drivers implementing the standard across the Mozilla l10n program.

Plans to implement MQM framework

There are preliminary plans to develop a Mozilla l10n QA tool based on the MQM framework. Ideas have included a gamified system, allowing users to choose to grade by project or by isolated issue type, and a sleak, web-based GUI complete with product screenshots for each string translation being evaluated. Some of the community has expressed interested in being involved in creating such a tool. We’ll be incorporating their feedback and getting their help as we move forward designing this MQM-based tool.

The MQM standard is governed by ASTM International. Mozilla has been invited to participate in the governing technical committee for the MQM standard, and we’re currently evaluating what our involvement in that committee would look like.

If you have any questions concerning the MQM framework at Mozilla, please feel free to email the Mozilla L10n mailing list.

Firefox L10n Report (cycles 31 & 32)

Jeff Beatty

0

Hello localizers!

Thank you all for your great work with Firefox 30 and 31. Here’s an outline of what is currently in Aurora this cycle (32) and what we accomplished together last cycle:

This cycle (Fx32) — 10 June – 21 July

Key dates:
– Beta sign offs must be completed before 14 July.
– Aurora sign offs must be completed before 21 July.
– Firefox 30 releases 22 July.

Features:
– Approximately 125 new string changes were made to Aurora desktop, 51 for Aurora mobile exclusively (unshared).
– 49% of the desktop strings changes are strings or files that need to be removed from your repos, including all of the metro files. 42% of all string changes are in devtools. The rest cover changes in form validation messages, the automatic translation feature, and others. (see https://wiki.mozilla.org/Features/Release_Tracking#Likely_in_Firefox_32 ).
– 24% of the mobile string changes are for getusermedia. The rest include locale switching, home page preferences, and message retrieval (see https://wiki.mozilla.org/Mobile/Roadmap#Firefox_32_.28Aurora.29 ).

Notes:
Please remember that sign offs are a critical piece to the cycle and mean that you approve and can vouch for the work you’re submitting for shipment.

Because nearly 50% of all 89 locales have not regularly signed off, and thus not shipping up-to-date localizations, I will begin contacting those teams this cycle to evaluate whether they can come up-to-date in a short amount of time, or if they need to be removed from the public Firefox release page ( https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/all/ ).

Last cycle — 28 April – 9 June

Noteworthy accomplishments:
– 69% of all locales shipped Firefox 30 on desktop updates on time. Congratulations to everyone who signed off and shipped this last cycle! This is an 12% increase in locale coverage between Firefox 29 and Firefox 30!
– 88% of all locales shipped Fennec 30 on time. Congratulations to everyone who signed off and shipped this last cycle! This is an 8% increase in locale coverage between Firefox 29 and Firefox 30!
– The Spanish (Mexico), Spanish (Argentina), Belarusian, Indonesian, Malay, and Latvian teams launched their first localizations of Fennec! Please contact the team to congratulate them on this massive accomplishment, and feel free to tweet all about!
– The new language switching feature in Fennec allows us to ship more locales on Fennec than ever before. If your locale wants to ship a Fennec localization, please contact us.

Thank you to everyone for all of your dedication and hard work this last sprint. As always, if you note anything missing in these reports, please let us know.

Language Switching in Fennec

Jeff Beatty

2

Allowing a user to select their language preferences for Android apps is typically tied to the operating system. Whatever languages your device lists in its OS language settings will determine the languages in which localization your apps, like Firefox for Android (also know as Fennec), will use. Essentially, if your language is not supported by Android, you’re unable to access your apps in your language either.

Additionally, the linguistic experience can be very limiting for the global Android end-user. Frequently device carriers and the manufacturers will filter which languages are available to the user to switch between. An Android device may be marketed as supporting 85 languages, but a user’s carrier in a particular region may only expose five of those 85 languages to the end-user.

These language support and filtration issues (among others) have made unlimited shipping of Fennec localizations an impossibility. We’ve had to carefully monitor the market to identify which languages are Android supported by device and region of the world before we could work with the regional localization team to ship their Fennec localizations. Many Mozilla l10n teams have kept Fennec localizations up-to-date since Fennec’s launch, waiting for a time in which their language will be shipped with Fennec. Thanks to the efforts of Richard Newman and the Fennec engineering team, this will no longer be the status quo for Fennec.

In Fennec 32, users will be able to select from all officially shipped localizations of Fennec within the browser itself. Languages no longer have to be among the list of Android supported languages to become official localizations of the browser. This moves us a huge step forward in being able to deliver Fennec in all of the languages of the world.

We’re still exploring how this will change any part of the onboarding new locales process for Fennec. When working on shipping a new locale, we’ll need the l10n teams’ help to test early and often for character rendering issues, input issues, UI restrictions, and other common internationalization and localization issues. However, if you have consistently maintained your Fennec localization and would like your work to be added to the official release, please send me an email and I will add you to the roadmap.

If you’re anxious to see this in action, this new feature can already be tested in Fennec 32 on the Nightly channel within the browser settings.

Screenshot_2014-05-20-09-55-38

 

Firefox Aurora L10n Report (cycles 29 & 30)

Jeff Beatty

0

Hello localizers!

Thank you all for your great work with Firefox 28 and 29. Here’s an outline of what is currently in Aurora this cycle (30) and what we accomplished together last cycle:

This cycle (17 March – 28 April)

Key dates include:
– Beta sign offs must be completed before 21 April.
– Aurora sign offs must be completed before 28 April.
– Firefox 29 releases 29 April.

Features:
– Approximately 94 new string changes were added to Aurora desktop, 57 for Aurora mobile.
– 34% of the desktop strings changes are in devtools, 6% are in metro, and about 14% are in DOM. The rest cover changes in preference UI for proxy autologin, GetUserMedia, Accounts (formerly Sync), and toolkit/mozapp/webapprt. (see https://wiki.mozilla.org/Features/Release_Tracking#Likely_in_Firefox_30 ).
– 24% of the mobile string changes are in DOM. Many of the mobile strings include context menu, home page preferences, and Firefox Accounts (see https://wiki.mozilla.org/Mobile/Roadmap#Firefox_30:_.28Beta.29 ).

Notes:
Please remember that sign offs are a critical piece to the cycle and mean that you approve and can vouch for the work you’re submitting for shipment.

This is a reasonably small cycle. If you have fallen behind (apprx 41% have), this would be a good cycle to catch up.

Last cycle (3 February – 17 March)

Noteworthy accomplishments:
– 59% of all locales shipped Firefox 26 on desktop updates on time. Congratulations to everyone who signed off and shipped this last cycle! This is an 11% decrease in locale coverage between Firefox 27 and Firefox 28!
– Estonian launched in Firefox for Android with Firefox 28. If your locale is ready for shipping and part of Android’s list of supported locales, please reach out to me to add you to the roadmap. Please join me in congratulating the team and sharing in your networks!

Thank you to everyone for all of your dedication and hard work this last sprint. As always, if you note anything missing in these reports, please let us know.