Windows Terminal may need to be translated into more languages

[moonlightz]

maintainer note: I'm repurposing this to "The Terminal may need to be translated into more languages now".

Languages requested:

• pt (this thread)
• pl (Support for Polish language in Windows Terminal #10931, Terminal might use i18n strings from multiple languages, if the preferred lang is not one WT is fully localized into  #15596)
• nl-NL Dutch - NLD (Secondary language always shown as GUI language even with language selection #11157)
• de-CH - (Windows Terminal appears in the wrong language #12075)
• Turkish - (Turkish translation #13364)
• Czech - (Czech translation #16677)
• Slovak - (Windows Terminal may need to be translated into more languages #10667 (comment))

Original post contents

Since Windows Terminal is going to be in the Win+X menu of Windows 11, why not fixing once for all the language UI issues?
My Windows 11 UI Language and keyboard scheme is only portuguese of Portugal while Windows Terminal language strings are in the horrible broken portuguese of Brazil. Don't get me wrong,,, I like Brazillian people but their speech and writing degraded the portuguese of Portugal speech and writing.
Windows Terminal team needs to allow people to choose the language they prefer using a small drop-down box or Windows Terminal needs to get the language selection from Windows UI language code.
I see many users are agravated with such language issues.
As of time of writing, brazillian strings are still present with version 1.8, 1.9, and 1.10. I don't recall how it was before but I used to use Windows Command Prompt all the time.

[skyline75489]

I think #10309 fixed this but I don't know if it's released or not.

[moonlightz]

I recognize I didn't dig enough. But I just installed the preview from Windows Store. I open Windows Terminal Preview using Windows Store (after installation) or by using Recommendations of Start Menu, PowerShell comes up inside of Terminal where I had Command Prompt selected before, then I click the "down arrow" next to the "+" button and... brazillian strings are still there.
Then I go to "settings", I look for language related stuff, not find it, and then I go to Appearence tab. It is there really and the drop-down box says it's getting the setting from system itself. I can click the drop-down box and I can see a lot of languages. Portuguese (Portugal) is there, then I click "Save" at bottom right and close both tabs and reopen Windows Terminal Preview and everything is still using brazillian. I went to confirm if the language was wrongly selected but nope. I even think the brazillian strings miss the context. It seems everything got translated by some AI instead being translated by real person.

[zadjii-msft]

Huh. This is a good point. #10309 lets users pick between the different languages that the Terminal is translated into, but the Terminal is still only translated into a subset of all the languages that Windows is translated into. If your system setting is set to Portugal Portuguese (I think that's just pt), then the Terminal will fall back to the nearest match, which is still pt-BR (Brazilian Portuguese)

[zadjii-msft]

@DHowett any ideas if we can let external folks submit translations for the languages we don't support? Like, maybe if we got partial translations for those languages it would at least help. Of course, that would presume that those partial translations could safely fall back to {the user selected language} if the resource hasn't been translated yet.

[moonlightz]

I don't see the why not let folks like us normal users to help translate things. There should be an unique platform we could join and help translating. I personally use Microsoft products like Windows everyday for years and sometimes I spot a mistake made by human translation or machine translation. Machine translation helps but is not ideal. The source language may not be in context and that leads to translation errors.

[zadjii-msft]

I think we as a team agree that we'd like to let folks do that, it's more a question of if the current localization stack we're using would enable that. I'm gonna see if there are some folks on the loc team that have any recommendations.

[zadjii-msft]

We did discuss this about a week ago. Takeaways:

Basic TODOs

These are things that we need help validating:

• We probably could allow community translations. You might be able to just check in resources to the repo right now, under directories for languages that don't get auto-translated, and it might just work.
• For languages that aren't fully translated by the community, the missing resources will probably fall back to the en-us versions. This is probably okay.
  • We need someone to confirm this. If that works, then we can definitely accept community translations for languages that we don't already support.

Hard TODOs

(possibly things that only the Terminal team engineers could do, b/c we'd need to set up CI pipelines)

• For languages we already support, does having a partial translation checked in supersede the automatic translation?
• If someone wanted to really get their senior engineering creds, they could:
  • Manually commit all the current translations to the Terminal repo
  • set up a nightly CI pipeline that submitted the en-us strings for translation
  • used that pipeline to file a PR to the Terminal repo with any updated strings from the loc service
  • when there are fixes submitted by community to the Terminal for the few automaticly translated languages, add a comment marking these strings as community-originated, so they don't get blown away in future PRs
  • [extra credit] when there are fixes submitted by community to the Terminal for the few automatic translations, auto-file bugs on the loc team to get their strings updated internally.

[hugok79]

What is the current state of the Portuguese (Portugal) translation. I am available to help with the translation.

[zadjii-msft]

@hugok79 Alas, there's no progress here. We still need someone to do the diligence on the work I outlined above. If we can accept partial language translations and have them fall back to the nearest language for resources that aren't yet translated, that'd probably open the door for a lot of contribution. I suppose for pt, missing resources should probably fall back to the existing pt-BR one, but I honestly don't know if it will (or how to test).

We'd love help figuring that all out though!

[mads1153]

There is no Norwegian translation for Windows Terminal stable version, so it would be nice to have it translated soon as possible.

[moonlightz]

There is no Norwegian translation for Windows Terminal stable version, so it would be nice to have it translated soon as possible.

I guess, you will have to wait years for that to be a reality.
I just installed the 1.16 preview and the languages list is still poor. I would also guess that not much has changed besides the Windows 11's theming is flowing everywhere.

Just removed the rest... I exceeded myself....

[zadjii-msft]

thinks Brazillian is my mother language... yacky... I would rather be born and speak English than speak a language that is being mistreated everyday because of the yacky language... and the people that speaks my mother language also mistreats the language.

I don't even consider pt-br a language, it is just a variant of portuguese which by the way is horrible and full of invented words and anglicisms!!

For the record - these kinds of comments are not in line with our Code of Conduct, and won't be tolerated here. Please keep this discussion on the actual technical details of implementing additional translations. This will be the only warning before I lock this thread.

As I've stated before: If we can accept partial language translations and have them fall back to the nearest language for resources that aren't yet translated, that'd probably open the door for a lot of contribution. I suppose for pt, missing resources should probably fall back to the existing pt-BR one, but I honestly don't know if it will (or how to test). We would love some help testing that out! If that works, then we could probably just accept partial translations from the community for any language, with fallbacks to the nearest language when a resource is missing in the requested language.

[zadjii-msft]

From a mail thread:

That's probably 90% of the battle.

• You'll probably need to manually add it to the package's manifest. A dev build of the terminal uses this manifest:

  terminal/src/cascadia/CascadiaPackage/Package-Dev.appxmanifest

  Line 43 in 10c6206

  <Resource Language="EN-US" />

  . Adding a line for Turkish might just work?
• Similarly, I think you'll probably need a Turkish line here:

  terminal/src/cascadia/CascadiaPackage/CascadiaPackage.wapproj

  Line 54 in 10c6206

  <PRIResource Include="Resources\en-US\Resources.resw" />

• You may also need to add Turkish to this list of tags?

  terminal/src/cascadia/TerminalSettingsEditor/GlobalAppearanceViewModel.cpp

  Line 26 in 10c6206

  static constexpr std::array appLanguageTags{

I think that would be enough to add Turkish? We can of course always help more if that doesn't work.

[zadjii-msft]

Some other notes:

Checked in resources in winget-cli repo: microsoft/winget-cli@master/Localization/Resources

Localization pipeline definition: microsoft/winget-cli@master/azure-pipelines.loc.yml The actual pipeline is internal - can't remember why, maybe TDBuild task wasn't installed in the AzDO project we wanted. From time to time someone runs it manually to submit the strings, then some time later again to get the LocalizedStrings.patch. It is applied and sent as a PR. For example microsoft/winget-cli#2264

We do get suggestions for translation improvements from the community, like microsoft/winget-cli#3044 Then we reference the PR in the internal work item, like task.ms/43701445

The thread starting at #12665 (comment) is really informative

04717ee has an example of what the loc build produces

From teams:

(Mike)
So you think we could take that, PR that back in, and then {{deal with merge conflicts / conflicts between auto-translations and community ones}}, and presto

(Dustin)
So, here's the ground rules as would be implemented if I did this
there will be no conflicts, as the other-language files are advisory-only. if somebody modifies one and we happen to accept it, the next commit from the bot will simply > delete their change in favor of what touchdown said
no conflict, just wholesale delete and replace every resw file
that that they would be diffed is a miracle of git's implementation, not an intrinsic property of what we're doing
(same path = look ma, i tried to diff them)

(Mike)
okay so then the ground rules for accepting community translations are... add a that just says "in es-ES this should be 'donde esta la biblioteca'"?

(Dustin)
or, when someone PRs against non-en-US we tell the loc team
x key, y file, z lang = abc

(Mike)
can we make that as easy as like, having a AzDo template bug that we just copy from? Or like, have all the fields filled in query params so that we can just click a link straight to a mostly filled azdo work item?

[AsciiWolf]

Also feel free to add Slovak language to the list. :-)

[moonlightz]

I commented but someone or something marked it as abuse for no reason.

[zadjii-msft]

As I said before: The kinds of commentary you are making about other languages is not in line with our Code of Conduct, and will not be tolerated here. Please keep this discussion on the actual technical details of implementing additional translations. I will continue to mark any commentary like that as abuse, with prejudice.

This thread remains a helpful place for people to request translations, so I don't want to lock the thread.

[AsciiWolf]

Any news about the Czech language translation?

[Natriss]

Is there any update on this?
Would love to see more languages in the terminal.