Serbian Language issues in admin

Well I need to share this issues from Plone installation in the part of drop down language options.

When admin wants to change language has option for Serbo - Croatian .
First of all this language does not exist anymore.

So this should be removed from Plone and language options.
Second is that there is Croatian language - Hrvatski (Official Croatian language) and that is fine.

But also there must be Serbian language.
Far as I see there is Serbian language on cyrilic and with small letters (српски) , which is not good for future Serbian Plone community, its seems offensive, cause native Serbian language is cyrilic but also latin.
So it should be Serbian Cyrilic (Брпски Π‹ΠΈΡ€ΠΈΠ»ΠΈΡ†Π°) and Serbian Latin (Srpski Latinica)

I hope that Plone developers will take this to consider to change.
If they need help, I am here.

Thank you

Hi @milanleon thanks for reaching us!

Yes, we do care a lot about languages, that's why Plone by default is multilingual aware :smile:

How are your python skills? I haven't really test it but a quick search made me think that the list of languages comes from this file:

Would you mind to provide a pull request to fix it? We can provide you guidance if you need to.

Again, thanks for taking your time to report this issue!

Hi @gforcada thanks for an answer :slight_smile:

Glad to hear that you care about languages and I am good with Python ...long term friendship :smiley:

Sure, I have sent pull request from Digitalna Srbija on Github, but also if you have any guidance please send...

If I have more infos I will done better job...

I am even register new Plone domain for Serbian community... Soon will be public.
Sorry for delay and thank you for answer once again.

1 Like

I'm too eager or I'm missing the pull request on plone.i18n? :slight_smile:

1 Like

I am so sorry Im having some issues here... :slight_smile:

You can check now the file languages.py.zip on the https://github.com/plone/plone.i18n/pull/16
From some reason I couldn't upload from terminal , but I uploaded to my repo in https://github.com/digitalnaSRB/Serbian-translation

If you need anything else please let me know, cause I really want to contribute Plone... :slight_smile:

p.s. why dont we have mobile app for Plone community ?

There is work being done with Angular and React on top of Plone+RESTAPI (the Plone "headless CMS" project), which you can find described elsewhere in this forum

1 Like

@milanleon I closed your pull request as it seemed you made a mistake there, no problem though, thanks to he zip I could create a proper one: https://github.com/plone/plone.i18n/pull/17 I added some questions on a comment though, would you mind double checking it?

2 Likes

@gforcada yes I saw it and I know on what kind of mistakes you think...

intentionally I've put a different codes (meaning of "rs" and "sr") cause I knew you will check it and in lack of informations about this changes I was expected your questions...

I'ill try to answer to your questions.
If you check other CMS, such as Wordpress, Drupal, Juoomla etc... In most of them are language code is "rs-sr" not sr (cause "sr" is Suriname) if you stick to ISO code and don't ask me why and how, cause I dont know :slight_smile:
So, if you stick to ISO code then RS (meaning of Republic of Serbia) is

So I thought maybe this will goes on same way in Plone as it is on other CMS... (ok it is not)

So, this changes was more like test file so I just need more instructions for other changes and it will be done on proper way.
Yes, my mistake was that I've put twice "sr-ba" instead of once as it was before, I want it to put "sr-rs" I mean that was sound logically for me.

Also I have to explain about this languages there is something more then this codes and I think for future community for Bosnia and Herzegovina, as well as Montenegro (don't have this in files) you should make changes in files....
This is just my suggestion, and I can PM you with screen shots if you want to know more about this.

Cause this language order is not so well for other communities.
Just one exp. If someone from Bosnia want to choose language he had only one option and this is "Bosanski" or from Macedonia has "MакСдонски" also not proper...

All this languages should be selected as example of
-Deutsch
-Deutsch (Γ–sterreich)

I am sorry for such a long message but I really believe that Plone can make real good thing in this part of world so that's why I am trying to help.

Thanks :slight_smile:

1 Like

And I'm happy that you put your effort on bringing the topic up.

I see a few things here:

The first and easier would be the last one you mention, that just like German and German (Austria) some countries do need their specific Serbian language version, is that right? A pull request with only these changes would be non-controversial to merge I guess.

Regarding the rs language that you made up, I'm rather skeptical of merging that. Is there any formal process being made to get in contact with ISO and get that code in the official list? If the idea was only to be able to have on the same listing both the name in Cyrillic as well as Latin, for other languages with digraphia (I had to look it up on wikipedia :D) like Urdu, we only use one writing system.

The whole data structure would have to be completely changed to support different locale names for a single language.

Is that something really important for Serbians, or like is stated in the Wikipedia article, all serbians are able to read equally fluently in both writing systems?

I hope I touched all the points. Let me know if not.

:slight_smile: yep, now I will give you some links and you can compare all differences.

Now I will answer from the start and I will repeat you words :slight_smile:

The first and easier would be the last one you mention, that just like German and German (Austria) some countries do need their specific Serbian language version, is that right? A pull request with only these changes would be non-controversial to merge I guess.

Yes, as you said , it would be best options to do with Serbian language..
So it could be made like :slight_smile:

Serbian (Latin)
Serbian (Cyrilic) or (Брпски јСзик) <---- translation is "Serbian language"

Regarding the rs language that you made up, I'm rather skeptical of merging that. Is there any formal process being made to get in contact with ISO and get that code in the official list? If the idea was only to be able to have on the same listing both the name in Cyrillic as well as Latin, for other languages with digraphia (I had to look it up on wikipedia :D) like Urdu, we only use one writing system.

Regarding codes take a look first this source Serbian language - Wikipedia
and you will find ISO codes
ISO_3166-2:RS

And after that this one specially second part of page, below the table Country codes of Serbia - Wikipedia

So I can suggest only that Plone could have Serbian in two options

Serbian Latin
Serbian Cyrilic (Брпски јСзик)

About code I can't give you any suggestion cause you can see on official ISO site how is going for Internet, cause even domestic domain name for Serbia is .RS

The whole data structure would have to be completely changed to support different locale names for a single language.

I don't think so you have to change all structure of site but I am not sure of this part of Plone structure which needs to be change, but I can show you on this link how it is look like Serbian language officialy for Wordpress and I know the guys who are working on it and there is code ( sr_RS) because this makes differences from Suriname.

WP_official_translation

Also I have registered domain name for Plone at Plone.RS and it is online already. Our domain is .RS as it is for Germany .DE

Is that something really important for Serbians, or like is stated in the Wikipedia article, all serbians are able to read equally fluently in both writing systems?

For Serbian community is only important to have two options as you mentioned before in case of Austria (Germany language)
So if there is any chance to make something like Serbian Latin and Serbian Cyrilic it would be perfect.

I have in plans to make meetup and other events of Plone for Serbian community so I think the language is essential things if we want to develope something good.

So it is all up to you... ...Plone
I can only contribute and help :slight_smile:

Thank you @milanleon for your contribution. The suggested additions sound like a good idea.

I am not however sure at all that we should also remove Serbo-Croatian from the list of language options in Plone core:

Languages live and die by their speakers, not by political or standards committee decisions. In addition to those now speaking "Croatian" or "Serbian" or "Bosnian" etc., there are (older) generations of speakers who learned and become educated in "Serbo-Croatian". I'd imagine it reasonable to think they might still prefer to call their language that, instead.

More often than not, it is good to be inclusive (offer everyone what they need) rather than exclusive (removing options). Especially if no single truth or consensus can be found or exist.

At least both wikipedia entry on Serbo-Croatian and Encyclopedia Britannica seem to suggest the issue is not simple, clear, or black-and-white. Some seem to think "Serbo-Croatian" should be called a "macro" language, or that it could be used to refer to the Croatian, Serbian etc. languages collectively, given that the speakers of those languages can understand each other.

Perhaps that kind of "collective" or "language group" usage or semantics for Serbo-Croatian "language" option might somehow be useful in Plone, for the aggregate regional website audiences (that sort of sidesteps any linguistical distinctiveness argument). Many 'dead' languages still serve such auxiliary or secondary purposes; just think of Latin.

In any case, I think Plone should be able to serve all and everyone, as much as possible. Adding language options for people is good, whereas removing options should not be done hastily, or without consideration or a good reason.

Also, I can see no harm from keeping the language option: After all, the site admin has to explicitly enable languages in order for them to be available to users.

Just my two cents' worth, as the old saying goes.

1 Like

Hi @petri

thanks for this comment,
I don't mind if Plone keep this "language" "Serbo-Croatian", my point was more likely to add Serbian Latin and Serbian Cyrilic to the Plone, but not so much to remove Serbo-Croatian...

I care more for our community to have the Plone on native language, that's all.
If we have for other communities such as Wordpress, Joomla, Drupal, Mozzila etc.. on Serbian I don't see the reason why don't we have for Plone too.

Maybe I used hard word about removing this "language".
Point is that this "language" nobody used to declare anymore in this part of world.

Because if you see the list of Plone, you can find Croatian, Serbian, Bosnian, Macedonian languages and all of them there, so then Serbo-Coratian misses the point.

But if you think that should be there, that's fine with me.

I agree, that's why I want to see in Plone Serbian Latin and Serbian Cyrilic..

1 Like

Back here, some backgrounds:

We shall use W3C Language Tags which are the same as IETF Language tags, as HTTP and HTML does.

Tags have (basically, read the above-linked texts for details) the form LANGUAGE-[SUBTAG].

An excellent reading on this topic is this W3C article https://www.w3.org/International/articles/language-tags/


Ok, @milanleon wants to support the different Serbian languages. So there are two different script types

  • Cyrl,
  • Latn

And afaik these different regions (as countries https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3166-2):

  • RS - Serbia
  • BA - Bosnia and Herzegovina
  • ME - Montenegro
  • (is something missing here?)

Since I dont know the serbian language at all, I am not sure if the regions need different translations?

It looks like we need at least

  • sr (Latin variant is default and does not need a subtag)
  • sr-Cyrl(Cyrillic)

If the region is important (because language is different), this may be extended in any combination with sr-RS, sr-BA, sr-ME or also as sr-RS-Cyrl and so on.

Btw., according to Wikipedia about Serbian-Croation, language code is sh and it is deprecated.

So here i find myself searching for how to activate the Latin script variant of Serbian in a Plone site and finding this thread from 2017.

After doing some research online I think @jensens has the correct summary/conclusion. Other open source like like Moments.js have had similar tickets (Wrong script used for Serbian locale, wrong date format Β· Issue #4740 Β· moment/moment Β· GitHub)

From the limited feedback I got, Serbian Latin(ica), Srpski is the default spoken/written language for normal day use, but Cyrillic is still used as well and sort of required for legal documents.

In the current Plone languages.py setup in plone.i18n, Cyrillic is the default. Interestingly, in plone.app.locales there is also Srpski Latinica, but it is stored in sr_Latn and sr contains the Cyrillic version.

language code wise: rs is the new TLD, but rs is not an official language code for Srpski Latinica. Also Latin and Cyrillic are not language variants but 'scripts'. One should denominate them with sr@Latn or sr@Cyrl

If you search for @Latn in plone.i18n there are even docstrings for the normalizer mentioning sr@Latn: Search Β· Latn Β· GitHub

But I have found no way to switch between the scripts in the language control panel or how I should modifiy plone.i18n to make that sr_Latn locales alo an option.

I can make my own fork of plone.app.locales and switch the two directories for the time being....

Fixing this along the lines indicated above is not so hard. I have code ready for this now.
But while working on it, I realised that this may give migration troubles for existing content.
I created an issue in plone.app.locales for it:

@milanleon Are you still around on the forum? Can you give guidance on this issue? See Serbian Latin should be the default script for sr Β· Issue #326 Β· collective/plone.app.locales Β· GitHub for some ways of how to technically tackle this.

Trickiest is how to support both Cyrillic and Latin in the same site, either with or without plone.app.multilingual installed. And question is whether this is ever needed in practice.

Also tricky is how to not break an existing site which is perfectly happy keeping everything in Cyrillic.