As recently announced, Firefox will be moving from releasing every 4 weeks to every 2 weeks on both Firefox for Desktop and Firefox for Android. The goal is for bug fixes, updates, and features to reach users soon after they are ready, while making the release process more predictable. With this come changes and impacts to the localization of these projects.
The transition will begin with Firefox 155 Beta shifting to a 2-week release and from there each Nightly, Beta, and Release period will be 2 weeks long.
Changes to localization schedule
Before this change, a string meant for a certain release version could be sent for localization 3 weeks before its release at the latest (on merge day, when the code for Nightly moves to Beta). In the new schedule, a string can be added 2 weeks before release at the latest, so the minimum localization timeframe (merge day to release) is being condensed from 3 weeks to 2 weeks. For example:
| Before: Firefox 154 (3 weeks) | After: Firefox 157 (2 weeks) | |
|---|---|---|
| Merge Day | July 20 | September 10 |
| Release Candidate | August 12 | September 24 |
Impact on localization
The biggest impact to you and your locale teams will be a shortened lead time between strings landing in Pontoon and their inclusion in Release. This means deadlines in Pontoon for both Firefox and Firefox for Android will be shortened to 2 weeks starting August 12. This does not mean that all strings will be landing 2 weeks before release. Just as before, many strings will land earlier, either during the Nightly cycle or even earlier (hidden behind release flags, like the settings redesign that happened across the first half of this year).
This change also does not mean that development is being pushed to ship twice as fast or twice as much. Instead, this allows fixes and properly baked features more flexibility in when they can be shared with users. However, the practical effect on localization will be that deadlines will come sooner and more frequently, though the number of strings expected in each cycle is lower.
Mitigations
While we don’t yet know their extent, we understand that this change introduces challenges for all of our contributor communities. One avenue we are currently experimenting with is to reduce time pressure on locales with the ability to show new features in Firefox when translations become available — at least initially — rather than display them in English if they aren’t ready. We’ve also started shipping updates to localization at every dot release to ensure the latest translations are included, even if they land after the initial release date.
One avenue locales can consider if this new cadence becomes challenging is pretranslation, which supplies temporary translations created from a combination of machine translation and translation memory. This comes with a potential compromise on quality, but brings the turn-around time to get a first translation to under 30 minutes. You can then proceed to edit or replace these when you are able. We understand this isn’t a solution for all locales, but please reach out or directly request the feature if you are interested.
Your feedback
As the announcement says, this will be an experiment and your feedback will be vital for the Localization team to advocate on your behalf as this progresses. We will keep tracking completion levels over time, to understand how this change impacts you and your locale’s users. Please reach out to us at l10n-drivers@mozilla.org or on Matrix with any feedback or questions.
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