Translation problems: Languages like "de-de" fail: /locales/de-de.json "Language not available"

[Wikinaut]

I noticed a problem where the existing translation files like /src/locales/de-de.json cannot be loaded, you can test this by accessing

https://your-pad-server/locales/de-de.json

which fails with message

Language not available

As an ad-hoc fix, I changed the test in
https://github.com/ether/etherpad-lite/blob/develop/src/node/hooks/i18n.js#L33

from

 if ((ext == '.json') && languages.isValid(locale)) {

to

 if (ext == '.json') {

CC: @marcelklehr

[marcelklehr]

Hey there!
apparently the module used for providing language info is outdated (last update 5 years ago, heh).
I recommend adding some of the code to etherpad directly: https://github.com/joker-x/languages4translatewiki/ (It simply fetches the data from the translatewiki API)

[Wikinaut]

@marcelklehr I just "digged" into the code, and resumed my work with Etherpad (especially, my plan is to fix and improve the ep-email-notification plugin). Perhaps you can work (together with me, if I can help) to fix the i10n issue/s ? Would be great. The hooks/i18n.js btw looks very ugly and old.

[marcelklehr]

As suggested in #3263 I recommend replacing languages4translatewiki with https://github.com/wikimedia/language-data which is already maintained. I won't work on this myself, however.

[SimJoSt]

Funnily enough, only the translations of the font names rely on the browser language. They are missing when running into this error, everything else is in the settings.json defined language.
Unifying that, would probably also be a good idea :-)

I always assumed the browser language takes precedence, but if it fails, the default language is chosen.

[anoymouserver]

In my opinion the l10n handler should fallback to a default language (probably english) if a translation for a specific property doesn't exist. Currently the text seems to be empty in the ui.

For example in german most of the font names are missing in the de.json. ("pad.settings.fontType")
However, I think it is unnecessary to copy such strings into every language, because they are always the same.

[muxator]

Hi, I think this and #3263 are important, but I really do not have the time to dig into it. Any volunteer?

[SimJoSt]

I would if I could, but I am missing the technical skill.

[JohnMcLear]

@Wikinaut just so I can replicate this; what's the actual problem? If I visit Etherpad using a German locale set on my browser (IE navigator.language === "de.de") then German translations will not be visible??

I feel like I'm being kinda dumb, I get the technical issue but I don't see how it's practically affecting users. Thanks!

[Wikinaut]

Hi @JohnMcLear , long time, no see! Nice that you are back!!

Give me some time, I am still along and working with Etherpad, give me some time to upgrade my running instance/s and to look, if the problem is still present.

I will come back and report here.

[stale]

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had recent activity. It will be closed if no further activity occurs. Thank you for your contributions.