Mozilla L10N

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Categories: L10n Reports Planet

L10n Report: July 2023 Edition

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New content and projects

What’s new or coming up in Firefox desktop

Deep dive: Firefox release schedule

If you’re new to Mozilla products, Firefox release schedule can be overwhelming. While whattrainisitnow.com is a useful resource to understand what’s shipping and when, let’s focus on the information that is relevant for localization:

  • Nightly should be your main focus as a localizer. New strings are exposed once or twice a week, the build is updated frequently (twice a day), so you can localize and test quickly before your translations are exposed to a larger audience with Beta and Release.
  • For Beta, we will automatically include updated translations up to the last week of the cycle (a cycle is usually 4 weeks long, but can occasionally be longer to accommodate for public holidays and other exceptions). The last week of the Beta cycle is “release candidate week” (RC week), and only urgent code fixes are accepted to avoid introducing new issues. The deadline you see in Pontoon is placed on the Sunday before RC week: that represents the last day to update translations and make sure they will be included in the actual RC build, which will then become Release a week later.
  • We normally don’t update translations in Firefox release, but it can be done manually in case of significant issues.

There is also another version of Firefox, called Extended Support Release (ESR): this version is targeted at users that don’t like frequent changes and updates, and it’s supported for about 9 months. The old and new ESR versions will overlap for a few weeks to guarantee a smooth transition, especially for enterprises with many installations.

Translations are not updated automatically for ESR after we ship the first build, but we normally update them 2-3 times during the ESR lifetime, to improve completion levels and include localization improvements. For example, 115.2 (the third build for ESR 115) will include a first localization update compared to the initial 115 release.

We try to hide all this complexity when it comes to localizing Firefox: you will only find one project in Pontoon, and that includes strings for all supported versions. Recently, we dropped support for the previous ESR version – Firefox ESR 102, which will stop receiving updates in September — which means all the strings used only in that version have been removed from Pontoon (about 1400 strings, including hundreds of legacy DTD strings).

New content

The amount of new content has been relatively small over the last months:

  • A new version of about:firefoxview is in the works. We will soon reach out through Pontoon notifications with more details and testing instructions.
  • There is a new feature to limit the execution of extensions on sites identified by Mozilla (called restricted sites). The goal is to protect users from known malicious actors, while still giving them the choice to manually allow extensions they trust.

What’s new or coming up in mobile

Things have been very quiet out in mobile land, and there is not much to report in this edition.

As the v116 l10n cycle comes to an end, string freeze for v117 is upon us and strings will be exposed within the next few days. There should be no additional strings landing for Firefox for iOS at this point.

On Android, we will be giving users the option to add a custom search engine URL.

Stay tuned for more updates in the next edition!

What’s new or coming up in web projects

Mozilla.org

The site will go through some changes throughout the rest of the year and to the next. The changes considered low hanging fruit will be made first, this includes the Home page. The new Home page will ensure all the locales will have the same look and feel.

Also, by the end of the month, some of the Relay Website content will be migrated to the mozilla.org site. For the communities that have been localizing the Relay Website project, the migration includes new content as well as existing localized content from Firefox Relay Website. Initially this content will only be available in the development environment, but strings will be visible in Pontoon once the migration is complete. If your locale is not enabled for the Relay project in Pontoon, you will see a lot of new content as a result. We will make an announcement after the migration has completed, please take some time to review the pages and ensure any minor glitches are identified and fixed.

Firefox Relay Website

The Relay Premium feature will be made available to more EU markets in a few weeks. These new markets include: Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Greece, Hungary, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, Portugal, Romania. Slovakia, Slovenia and more.

This launch requires the localization of the Firefox Relay Website and Firefox Accounts in order to have a good user experience. If Relay is not enabled by the community in Pontoon, the product will be offered in English. If the Firefox Accounts is opted in by the community in Pontoon, but the completion is under 70%, the payment portion of the user flow will fall back to English but in the corresponding currency for the local. It’s never too late to enable the products if your locale has not. If it is enabled for both but the projects are falling behind, please give them higher priority and make time to catch up. Thank you!

Newly published localizer facing documentation

We recently completed a comprehensive update of our Pontoon documentation for localizers. This new documentation should accurately reflect the Pontoon environment as you see it today, with handy details on things like how to make the most of tools in your translation workspace, how to use search filters to find the strings you need efficiently, and everything you need to know on how to translate in Pontoon. Check it out!

If you spot any mistakes, have ideas to make the documentation better, or would otherwise like to contribute to our localizer documentation, visit our GitHub repository and check out the README for information on how to contribute.

Friends of the Lion

Image by Elio Qoshi

  • Victor is a passionate localizer, who has been spearheading the Mozilla mission in Tajikistan for quite a few years now. He is involved on many fronts, including digital literacy trainings in Tajikistan to introduce Firefox in the Tajik language and promoting it as the number one browser in the country. He also collaborates with marketplaces, to connect them with local farmers without intermediaries. He uses local opportunities to promote safer internet browsing and showcased the potential of Firefox in Tajik in that context. Victor is also heavily involved in a US embassy funded project aimed to enhance internet access and safety for leaders and their communities in Tajikistan, with a focus on independent media, countering violent extremism, women’s economic empowerment, environmental awareness, and more. The project also emphasizes the importance of diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility in its implementation. Thank you Victor for helping the internet to stay safe, open and accessible to all!

Know someone in your l10n community who’s been doing a great job and should appear here? Contact us and we’ll make sure they get a shout-out!

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