[wp-trac] [WordPress Trac] #28197: Fallback Languages

[WordPress Trac]

#28197: Fallback Languages
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 Reporter:  downstairsdev  |       Owner:
     Type:  enhancement    |      Status:  closed
 Priority:  normal         |   Milestone:
Component:  I18N           |     Version:  4.0
 Severity:  normal         |  Resolution:  maybelater
 Keywords:                 |     Focuses:
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Comment (by p_enrique):

 I found this ticket when my translations where not working as I expected
 -- I assumed that a fallback language would be included as a matter of
 course. I just finished translating my plugin to Spanish, and I was
 expecting that `text-domain-es.mo` would work for the entire Spanish-
 speaking world instead of needing `text-domain-es_ES.mo`, `text-domain-
 es_AR.mo` et cetera.

 I have years of experience living in South America, and I believe firmly
 that a typical Chilean, Peruvian, Argentinian or Colombian user, to name
 but a few, would rather have ''anything'' in Spanish instead of getting an
 English-language UE. In the Spanish-speaking world, people are accustomed
 to the existence of regional variations and the appearance of technical
 terms from another culture in the IT context.

 Now I am practically forced to copy the same translations over to es_AR,
 es_CL, es_CO, es_MX, es_PE, es_PR and es_ES to give my users at least
 something in their own language instead of the plugin's native English. I
 think this is just silly and bloats the size of the plugin. Additionally,
 copying translations this way is the real insult to cultural sensivity, as
 I am only pretending to offer a culture-specific custom translation for,
 let's say, Argentinians, but am actually only copy-pasting the generic
 Spanish content.

 I want to add that speak Finnish, English and Spanish at a very fluent
 level and have a good command of French, German and Swedish, so I'm not
 totally unaware of the issues of inter-cultural communication.

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Ticket URL: <https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/28197#comment:19>
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