Librem 5 available languages

Hi,

Witch are available languages for Librem 5 ?

I don’t think this is firmly decided. It depends on the translations that are ready for the different software components on the phone, support for multiple languages in the virtual keyboard, and probably other factors.

Translation of the software components is an activity we need help with. See the Translations page on the developer documentation site if you are interested in helping out. :smile:

PureOS is based on debian so normaly most part of translation should be done ?

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Yes, there should be translations for most of the things provided with PureOS. There are some applications that are new to the Librem 5 and they will need translating, too.

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Thanks for this answare. I don’t understand why purism refuse to talk about languages for all products (keyboards layout, available system languages …)

I hope Replicant will be ported to Librem 5 as it is available in french.

I don’t think Purism refuse to talk about languages.
They certainly have more important things to do right now :slight_smile:

Regarding Librem 5, I don’t see why french won’t be available.

Well, open source hardwares, in particular smartphone, are very rare. They may interest many people around the world, people how speak many languages. Now, if you consider the price of Librem 5 and you can not use it in your language, it seems to me to be a trade brake. That is the reason why I’m asking this.

I wanted to buy a librem laptop but without french (or any other layout depending the one you are accustomed to use) it’s not possible. For a moderate use of a computer qwerty or qwertz (german) layout could be usable, but for a heavy use not.

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FWIW, I’ve seen some screen shots of French developers working on apps for the phone and it looks as if full French translation will be available.

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I believe there are both German and French keyboards available for the Librems 13 and that since so much of the software is based on Debian a good deal of it will be translated to French and many other languages.

Ok, it’s a good news if the phone us available in many languages.
For the french keyboard, I never seen it :frowning:

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There are developers of different nationalities working on the phone, so hopefully that will result in good multi-lingual support.

Meanwhile, I look forward to seeing Replicant running on the phone. The more environments running on it, the better, as far as I am concerned. :smile:

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I’m from Thailand and it seems it would take years, if ever, for Librem phone to support Thai input.
I just asked for a refund because I couldn’t justify buying a device that I couldn’t input in my language.
For me it would have to be Android or iOS for now.

I can’t speak for every party of the open source community, but if enough developers get behind it, your language could come up sooner than you think.

Thanks for the encouragement. I’ll wait and see :slight_smile:

not to offend anyone but for me it is awkward if a device supports MY own native language as i’m too used to operating in an English environment. it’s like i feel lost if i have to look at something non-english. besides good books that is …

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I do not understand. If there is not your language, you sign up in zanata and do the translation of posh (at least for the initial interface). Involve other friends / linux users and do the translation of the software you need (at least at the beginning). It seems trivial to me. Excuse me but in open source we think like this, everyone can contribute

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So true. I have the same habit, reinforced by notoriously poor translations from English.

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I agree and also already translated other applications (not via zanata but the json the developer provided).
However I guess that it’s not always the case you can just do it like here as translations are not always included. There are a lot of new applications here, the keyboard and we don’t know if it was all built to be translatable. As I work in IT I often see how translations are prioritized. I can totally understand that some people won’t use English only - there we are again with target audience :wink:
However as many posted before - OSS is more likely to have translations as anyone can do it and it’s embraced anyone does it. Just look at the strangest projects in github where you would expect only 5 global users but for no reason there are like 20 translations to a lot of languages.

I better get started on the Quechua and Aymara translation of Phosh. That way there will only be ONE global user. :slight_smile:

The problem I have with GNOME and Linux in general is that there is no easy way to switch the language for a particular language in a particular program, whereas it tends to be much easier in Windows.

I was part of a group that translated Abiword into Quechua and Aymara years ago, but using it was a real pain because GNOME assumes that all programs are using the same locale. Since there was no Quechua and Aymara translation for GNOME, I couldn’t login in one of those languages. I had to create a custom launcher which sets the locale when launching the program and there was no defined locale for Quechua and Aymara, so I had to use the locale for another language/country, but only set LC_LANG to the minority language.

Frankly, it is much easier to deal with minority languages in Windows, because most Windows programs let you install in a particular language and don’t try to use the system’s locale.

The lesson is to do a translation of all of GNOME in your language and create a locale for it, or you will have to create a lot custom launchers to get particular programs in your language. This won’t be a problem for French, but it is a real problem for languages like Quechua and Aymara, because most people who speak those languages want to see the interface in Spanish if a program hasn’t been translated into Quechua or Aymara and they want to use the Spanish locale for their country.

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