Non-US English support #18320
Labels
Issue-Feature
Complex enough to require an in depth planning process and actual budgeted, scheduled work.
Needs-Tag-Fix
Doesn't match tag requirements
Needs-Triage
It's a new issue that the core contributor team needs to triage at the next triage meeting
Description of the new feature
The software should use the system language, otherwise use any override in settings.json. The docs currently say language “ Accepts: A BCP-47 language tag like "en-US"” which indicates, to me, arbitrary/ broad language support.
Unfortunately, at present, changing “language” in settings.json to non-American English variants such as “en”, “en-GB”, “enGB”, “en-AU”, “en-CA”, “en-BZ”, “en-IE”, “en-NZ” etc. doesn’t change the language, it remains fixed to “en-US”. Words such as ‘colour/color’ are spelled using the American variant.
It’s probably not something exciting to prioritise but a little goes a long way in terms of making people feel welcome using your product. Given the languages are so similar, the lack of translations feels dismissive. It seems a little ironic for a product which is meant to improve the shell user experience on Windows.
Other languages are installed. French works, but it seems a bit extreme to use a completely different language just to have a locale ‘correct’ spelling.
Proposed technical implementation details
A separate language file - replace American spellings with their non-American counterparts. The languages are similar enough this must be easy to automate. Use AI even. It’s a great buzzword for a write up & performance review.
If it’s not possible to translate, could you adopt a neutral policy instead? I.e. Avoid Noah Webster’s opinions altogether and just have ‘appearance’ instead of ‘color pallet’?
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