It is more about the input method then the phone’s operating language. This is a problem for all languages using non latin characters and pretty much a deal breaker if you want to use it as a daily driver.
I don’t know how big the open source communities are in e.g. China, Korea or Japan but it would be awesome if the community could push such things. This would help tremendously to spread this phone worldwide.
It is important to look at the program and understand how a string is being used when translating.
I prefer to use Linux in English rather than Spanish, because I’m often unsure how the Spanish got translated, especially when trying to understand error messages where I need to search for the error online to find a solution. However, using software in English isn’t an option for many people, so the translations, even if bad translations are necessary.
yeah i guess it depends on how bad they are then 
I’m all up for translations regarding user interface, even though I personally would not use them – when I turn on a computer, my mind switches to English.
But the log files and technical error messages are not for users, but rather for support guys or developers. And those should be in English.
People not interested in internals of IT technology won’t grok them anyway, even if they are translated into their language. And good luck for most of developers to understand error message translated into Aymara, Polish, or Korean. Having them in English makes them easier to understand (consistent terminology) and easier to search the internet for solutions 
Unfortunately, translators are not making a distinction between user-related errors (like no such file or directory ) and technical errors (like script-fu attempted to install invalid menu item). and go on translating everything.
To their defense, sometimes the distinction is difficult to make (like no route to host)
“Stupid thing happened”
“Click here for the gory technical details” 
“Click here to Google this error in English” 
Nailed it, that’s a good man!
haha ! we should have a message saying “before you agree to install this language pack/translation be SURE that you properly speak/understand your first-language if not power-off now and get to work”
I use translations and can confirm that when searching for error messages depending on how popular the program is the translation can be a kind of a bad thing as the user base using English is much higher and the probability to find some ubuntu forum, arch forum or mailing list is higher with English. That’s why sometimes I translate the error message back to English or describe the problem.
However that’s for someone as me who can understands both languages. Translating everything is about inclusion, having a diverse community and making it future proof.
I like the solution of “copy me this error message in english” which maybe is not feasible in the console. Maybe other solutions could be clever search engines or error codes
The simplest workaround (instead of translating back) is to invoke the program with the default locale (C as in the programming language), something like
LC_ALL=C inkscape
Of course, it’s more convenient when you’re already on the command line anyway:
LC_ALL=C apt install lollipopI suppose searchability is one benefit of the unfashionable pattern of giving error messages unique error codes, which are the same for every language
(On the other hand, in my experience, search engines are not particularly good at discriminating between different error codes if there are not many good results, and people can be led astray by that and try to follow instructions that are meant to solve an entirely unrelated problem.)
Hello
about the message, instead of searching for every single software in need of translation, you could kindly indicate which software needs to be translated (obviously I am referring to the Librem5).
Hello and thanks
Hello
you could kindly indicate which software needs to be translated (obviously I am referring to the Librem5).
Hello and thanks
This would be a nice list. Also similar: which languages are supported (and to what level: keyboard only, basic systems, other functions, most programs…).
I expect those mostly to appear near or after shipment and to update during following months.
I noticed in Zanata (translation platform) that phosh and chatty (the only ones I’ve found that relate to L5) have leaped several percent in finished translations (many localizations will never be made). Yay! 
A side note: this isn’t an issue at the moment and not for a while BUT Zanata is dying. 
The RedHat devs seem to be out since last fall. It’s still running though, for now, and I’ve noticed no issues. At some point an alternative tool is needed.
Plasma Mobile (which you will have to flash because phone ships with PureOS) supports Thai via Qt Keyboard. I’ll probably end up doing this because I prefer KDE over GNOME and Japanese input looks like it won’t be supported at launch with Squeekboard (what PureOS ships with)
The Qt Virtual Keyboard looks impressive. It’s a shame that it doesn’t seem to integrate with non-Qt environments. My understanding is that it can either be integrated into an embedded application, built as an input method plugin for Qt apps on a desktop, or built into a Qt-based Wayland compositor to provide a pop-up keyboard for apps.
I think the Plasma Mobile team were looking at a cross-toolkit input method layer so that they could support GTK apps with the keyboard. I don’t know how far they got with that.
@david.boddie I saw some videos ( https://invidio.us/watch?v=Gvnt78mK-Ac ) and i noticed a lot of languages are mising from the first startup, there is any option to add a language during this startup or later? desktop linux have a lot more
I think those were keyboard layouts.
Those are progressing.
Look here
At beginning under “welcome” sound more like a system language than keyb that come at next selection
I don’t actually know where the list of languages in the first startup are defined. That application is GNOME Initial Setup, so it should have a similar range of languages to what you would see on a desktop.
at the first start in qemu image there are not all languages. the Italian is missing, for example