Please note some of the information provided in this report may be subject to change as we are sometimes sharing information about projects that are still in early stages and are not final yet.

Welcome!

New localizers

German: Felix came to us through the Common Voice project. He is now actively involved in Engagement and MDN projects.

For the new Ixil locale, we have 4 new l10n community members: Miguel Eliseo, Miguel, Manuela and Gerardo. Welcome to all!

Are you a locale leader and want us to include new members in our upcoming reports? Contact us!

New community/locales added

Ixil (“ixl”) is a new community that just got added this week, and already started working on Focus for Android. Ixil is a Mayan language spoken in Guatemala, and you can learn more about it here. Welcome!

New content and projects

What’s new or coming up in Firefox desktop

In the past weeks we have completed the migration to Fluent of all XUL panes in Preferences. Today we landed one more major bug, migrating about 150 strings that cover the XUL portion of all the subdialogs (Fonts, Languages, Proxy, Colors, etc.). This leaves out only a few edge cases that require code changes in Fluent itself, and some strings in .properties files used also outside of Preferences. As of today, only 14 strings remain in DTD files, and 115 in .properties.

Given the extent of the changes we’re doing, make sure to test your localization on Nightly, and report any issue you find in migrated strings, or in the way Preferences work with Fluent.

In case you’ve missed it, this week we also published a blog post explaining what’s been done to integrate CLDR data into Firefox in the past months, and the next steps for 2018.

One final reminder: Firefox 60 is an ESR version, and it’s possible to localize strings only until April 25. Make sure to complete translations before this deadline, and give yourself enough time to test, otherwise they won’t be included in this release.

What’s new or coming up in mobile

This month has been packed with good stuff in mobile land. Firefox for iOS v11 just launched with RTL support, which means we are now shipping our Arab, Hebrew, Persian and Urdu localizations. We now have RTL support on all our mobile projects, which is a really great accomplishment. Congrats and THANKS to all those involved in this! You can also learn more about this latest update of Firefox iOS 11 on the Mozilla blog: Latest Firefox for iOS Now Available with Tracking Protection by Default plus iPad Features

We’re now shipping eight new locales on Firefox iOS with this new version: Aragonese (an), Arabic (ar), Persian (fa), Hebrew (he), Croatian (hr), Georgian (ka), Occitan (oc) and Urdu (ur). Congrats to all these teams!

Vietnamese (vi) is a new language that shipped on Firefox Android 59 last month, so congrats to the team on getting that going too.

On Focus Android side, we had five new locales ship with v4.1: an (Aragonese), gu-IN (Gujarati), hr (Croatian), oc (Occitan) and tt (Tatar). We are now at a total of 75 shipping locales on Focus for Android \o/

To conclude, just like for desktop, a friendly reminder that it’s only possible to localize strings for Firefox Android 60 until April 25.

What’s new or coming up in web projects

The CPG, or the Community Participate Guidelines, has been published for a while. We now make it a bit more discoverable by adding it to the Pontoon Term page. Please take a read of the document if you haven’t had a chance before. Whenever the guideline is updated, you will be prompted to review the amendment before proceeding on Pontoon. We encourage you to periodically refer to these guidelines when collaborating with others from different regions and cultures, and especially when resolving differences.

The Common Voice project has brought quite a few new contributors to many communities. This is very exciting! These contributors are new to Pontoon, probably new to the localization process and to the way Mozilla localization community works. As a manager or a translator for enabled locales, please review the suggestions in a timely manner, provide constructive feedback, and re-evaluate the roles of these new localizers based on the quality of their work. Additionally, reach out to them, and get them signed up to the web project mailing list.

What’s new or coming up in Foundation projects

Facebook & Privacy campaign

Last month we reported that things were quiet on the campaign side of things. Well, it didn’t last long. All of you should be aware of the Facebook / Cambridge Analytica scandal by now. We launched a Rapid Response campaign, and this is the first time we’re localizing it, so here are some details of what happened over the past few weeks.

Here’s a rough timeline of events on the Policy/Advocacy side:

The news broke over the weekend of March 18th.

On Monday, it has been decided to launch a Rapid Response campaign, and localize it. First time we’re doing that!

By Monday evening, we had a campaign strategy. An email & a petition were drafted and went through an expedite approval process. Many teams at Mozilla were all hands on deck, including top executives. We began localizing the email right after this.

On Tuesday morning we evaluated our options to localize the petition on our brand new website, which does not have localization support. We found a hacky way to publish multiple pages with the same petition, so we just did that for localized petitions. It’s not perfect, but we had to be creative!

By Tuesday evening, the email was translated into French, German, Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese. Translated emails were coded into our emailing platform and email proofs were sent to localizers for a formal approval. Translated petitions were also pushed live.

On Wednesday, localized emails were sent, covering the vast majority of Mozilla subscribers!

We were able to help launch the initial petition and email into five languages in less than 72 hours. It’s been incredibly helpful to be able to mobilize so many people in just a few hours. It turned out the multiple initiatives launched by Mozilla & other organizations have been noticed by Facebook and they did what we asked — update their privacy settings.

Thanks to everyone who helped translate, review and approve these messages!

What’s next?

This is a first win towards a healthier Internet, but we won’t stop just yet. It’s actually a great way to engage on these critical issues. The campaign will continue over the next few months. We will keep widening the debate to other aspects of online privacy where we can, and not focus exclusively on Facebook. And try to move the debate outside the U.S., because everyone is affected by those issues.

On the localization side, we’re not yet in an ideal position where we can scale our localization efforts, but this first Rapid Response campaign has been encouraging and it will help shape up the next steps of our work.

Internet Health Report

Mozilla released the Internet Health Report 2018, you should check it out! It comes right on time and is quite relevant at a time where data & privacy issues are in the headlines. There is also an interesting piece on Building a multilingual Internet. Also feel free to report issues using this GitHub repository.

Newly published localizer facing documentation

Pontoon documentation has been updated to reflect the new search capabilities, and possibility to search and translate across all projects.

Events

Read this blog post in case you want to know what’s cooking in regards to localization community events planning in 2018 (and more)!

Want to showcase an event coming up that your community is participating in? Reach out to any l10n-driver and we’ll include that (see links to emails at the bottom of this report)

Friends of the Lion

Huge thank you to Guillermo Movia, Drashti, Irvin Chen, Cécile Bertin and Mozinet for reporting issues on the Internet Health Report. And to Cécile for also completing the French translation of the Talk plugin from the Coral Project, which is used in the report.

Know someone in your l10n community who’s been doing a great job and should appear here? Contact on of the l10n-drivers and we’ll make sure they get a shout-out (see list at the bottom)!

Useful Links

Questions? Want to get involved?

Did you enjoy reading this report? Let us know how we can improve by reaching out to any one of the l10n-drivers listed above.