Setting Up Sesotho For LibreOffice Languages

l10n
#1

Hi,

------------------ Original ------------------
Send time: Wednesday, May 19, 2021 6:58 AM

Greetings,
I would like to ask how one would get started in building the language for
Sesotho?
To an extend even building language support for the language.

Someone who knows more probably will give you a more detailed answer, but
for now you can look at the southern Sotho / Sesotho translation on Weblate [1]
and find the area for improvement. For now you can only make suggestions,
and since there is no contact person listed on the LibreOffice language teams
page [2], you'll want to contact the previous translator to see how you can
cooperate. If he/she is no longer working on the translation, you can write to
this list again and ask to become the main translator for Sesotho and get access
to directly change the translation string on Weblate instead of just making
suggestions.

1. https://translations.documentfoundation.org/languages/st/
2. https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Language_Teams

Hope this helps,
Ming

#2

The thing is I did.
South Sotho as its called has a dialect more aimed at South Africa. Lesotho
has its own way of presenting the language.
Given that challenge, rather than offending people, I think it would be
ideal to have Sesotho. We don't do the whole Northern and Southen Sotho
thing...

#3

Hi and welcome!

The thing is I did.
South Sotho as its called has a dialect more aimed at South Africa. Lesotho
has its own way of presenting the language.
Given that challenge, rather than offending people, I think it would be
ideal to have Sesotho. We don't do the whole Northern and Southen Sotho
thing...

So what would be the language code to use given that we already have
Southern Sotho (st) in Weblate and researching for it, ISO gives:
https://www.loc.gov/standards/iso639-2/php/langcodes_name.php?iso_639_1=st

Cheers
Sophie

#4

Hi Hlompho,

If you'd like to get more people involved with the translation effort,
just let me know. I do marketing and community outreach here at The
Document Foundation, and can spread the word on our blog and social
media, encouraging others with knowledge of the language to join in, eg
like this:

https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2020/06/22/community-member-monday-jwtiyar-ali/

Just drop me a line if so!

Cheers,
Mike

#5

Hi,

> South Sotho as its called has a dialect more aimed at South Africa. Lesotho
> has its own way of presenting the language.
> Given that challenge, rather than offending people, I think it would be
> ideal to have Sesotho. We don't do the whole Northern and Southen Sotho
> thing...

So what would be the language code to use given that we already have
Southern Sotho (st) in Weblate and researching for it, ISO gives:
https://www.loc.gov/standards/iso639-2/php/langcodes_name.php?iso_639_1=st

We already have "Northern Sotho" in the language list, ISO 639-2 'nso'.

In Weblate https://translations.documentfoundation.org/languages/nso/

Its actual standard name seems to be Pedi
https://iso639-3.sil.org/code/nso
but everywhere else named Northern Sotho (except in Weblate :wink:

In the language list we may want to rename

Northern Sotho -> Sotho, Northern
Southern Sotho -> Sotho, Southern

so they are grouped together when alphabetically sorted.

  Eike

#6

I realised that issue,
So in light of that, I would like to know if it's ever possible that ls
being Lesotho ISO code be added to the Lesotho aspect of the branch?
Because the Sotho (as they may call it) does have some serious issues in
how the language has been put together from our perspective.
Then there is the other issue of how we write our words. Since written
language from our end has more of an influence from how French vocabulary
was written, there are some significant differences in how words are put
together.
So in light of this point, I think to prevent creating issues on the
efforts of the South Sotho, I think it would be ideal to create a new
branch altogether.

#7

I saw that,
From our end, we refer to the language as Sesotho.
Based on this point there are some other significant differences even how
we speak and use the language. Given that Lesotho is an independent state,
our language doesn't tend to have some of the influences from other
languages in South Africa.
However given that our language in its current form is the official
language, there is some issue that may need be addressed and that there are
some significant differences in how they are written.

#8

Hi,

I realised that issue,
So in light of that, I would like to know if it's ever possible that ls
being Lesotho ISO code be added to the Lesotho aspect of the branch?

ls is the ISO code of the country see:
https://www.iso.org/obp/ui/#iso:code:3166:LS, we use ISO language codes
(639-1 or 639-2)

Because the Sotho (as they may call it) does have some serious issues in
how the language has been put together from our perspective.
Then there is the other issue of how we write our words. Since written
language from our end has more of an influence from how French vocabulary
was written, there are some significant differences in how words are put
together.
So in light of this point, I think to prevent creating issues on the
efforts of the South Sotho, I think it would be ideal to create a new
branch altogether.

I understand your point of view, but there is nothing we can do on our
side, technically we need an existing ISO language code.

Cheers
Sophie

#9

Hello,

sophi kirjoitti 20.5.2021 12:28:

I understand your point of view, but there is nothing we can do on our
side, technically we need an existing ISO language code.

Looking at the list of languages at hosted.weblate.org, there seem to be at least several which probably don't have (official) ISO codes: https://hosted.weblate.org/languages/

So I don't think having an official ISO language code is a strict requirement on Weblate's part, at least.

Best regards,
Tuomas

#10

Could you be more specific and name which ones?
Cheers
Sophie

#11

Sophie kirjoitti 20.5.2021 21:32:

Hello,

sophi kirjoitti 20.5.2021 12:28:

I understand your point of view, but there is nothing we can do on

our

side, technically we need an existing ISO language code.

Looking at the list of languages at hosted.weblate.org, there seem to
be
at least several which probably don't have (official) ISO codes:
https://hosted.weblate.org/languages/

So I don't think having an official ISO language code is a strict
requirement on Weblate's part, at least.

Could you be more specific and name which ones?
Cheers
Sophie

I don't think "English (Developer)" is any officially ISO-recognised language, for example: https://hosted.weblate.org/languages/en_devel/#information

There's also stuff like this: https://hosted.weblate.org/languages/_DE/#information
Abd this: https://hosted.weblate.org/languages/untranslated/#information

It would seem to me that Weblate is happy to accept just about any made-up code, it doesn't have to be one of the officially recognised codes.

Cheers,
Tuomas

#12

Hi Sophie, hi all,

------------------ Original ------------------
Send time: Thursday, May 20, 2021 5:28 PM

I understand your point of view, but there is nothing we can do on our
side, technically we need an existing ISO language code.

I admit that I'm rather ignorant on how LibreOffice and Weblate handle
these different languages, but why can't we just give them a combined
language-and-country ISO code "st-LS" like we already do for English,
Chinese and Portuguese (en-US, en-UK, zh-CN, zh-TW, pt-BR, etc.)?

Ming

#13

Hi,

So in light of that, I would like to know if it's ever possible that ls
being Lesotho ISO code be added to the Lesotho aspect of the branch?

If you are proposing 'st-LS' additionally to 'st' (which defaults to
'st-ZA') then yes, that would be possible.

For the LibreOffice language list I'd then suggest
Sotho (Lesotho)

  Eike

#14

Hi,

So I don't think having an official ISO language code is a strict
requirement on Weblate's part, at least.

For LibreOffice however it is a strict requirement to have a valid BCP 47
*language tag*. Which usually is the ISO 639-1/2/3 language code plus
maybe a ISO 3166 country code, but can also be any tag of IANA
registered subtags. If you're interested in the glory details see my
link collection at https://erack.de/bookmarks/D.html#Language_Tags

Making up an arbitrary string like 'en_devel' will not work. A similar
valid language tag however could be 'en-x-devel' indicating
a private-use tag, which is not interoperable though and thus should
never be used for document content or anything else leaving the
"private-use agreement sector".

  Eike

#15

Hi,

> So in light of that, I would like to know if it's ever possible that ls
> being Lesotho ISO code be added to the Lesotho aspect of the branch?

If you are proposing 'st-LS' additionally to 'st' (which defaults to
'st-ZA') then yes, that would be possible.

For the LibreOffice language list I'd then suggest
Sotho (Lesotho)

So, should it be st-LS and "Sotho (Lesotho)"?

They would have to be added to the known locales and language list, if so.

  Eike

#16

Here is the funny thing,
We just referee to our language as Sesotho. But with the need to
accommodate the international codes allocated I thought it would be more
ls-ST. But rather than using Sotho, Could we refer to it as Sesotho?

#17

Greetings,
Based on this part of the protocol:
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc5646#section-2.2.4
I think the idea that Lesotho could have its own defined language tag.
(Well from my limited understanding)
Besides that, there are some significant differences in our language. So on
this note, I hope that it could count as a case for this petition.

#18

Greetings,
To make issues simpler to just name it as Sesotho that than Sotho.
So in creating the international code, we could simply just give it the
proper definition.

#19

Hi Hlompho,

Based on this part of the protocol:
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc5646#section-2.2.4
I think the idea that Lesotho could have its own defined language tag.
(Well from my limited understanding)

The Region Subtag is exactly the ISO 3166-1 country code mentioned with
st-LS (here LS for Lesotho) in the other subthread.

  Eike

#20

Hi Hlompho,

Here is the funny thing,
We just referee to our language as Sesotho. But with the need to
accommodate the international codes allocated I thought it would be more
ls-ST.

I presume you got that twisted and meant st-LS instead.. there's no 'ls'
language code and you don't want it for 'Sao Tome and Principe' :wink:

But rather than using Sotho, Could we refer to it as Sesotho?

Sure, the naming in the language listbox is just up to us, as long as it
makes sense..

  Eike