Plurals for new locales not displaying the proper number of Fluent variants in translator UI

[bcolsson]

The appropriate number of plural variants shown for a recently added locale doesn't match the plural groups set for the locale.
Example is Kalaallisut kl

Testing on staging the following all result in only two Fluent variants being shown:

• Creating a new locale with plural settings matching kl from production
• Create a new locale with plural settings matching ar from production
• Changing an existing locale with plural settings matching ar from production

This only seems to affect newer locales, as locales added long ago (such as ar) do not appear to be affected.

[flodolo]

Throwing Claude at the issue, this looks like a regression from #2684 (cc @eemeli).

pontoon/translate/src/utils/message/getEmptyMessage.ts

Line 57 in 175890e

.concat(getPluralCategories(code));

We're never using the internal list of plurals?

pontoon/translate/src/utils/message/getPluralCategories.ts

Line 39 in 175890e

if (supported.length === 0) {

[eemeli]

There might be a regression here for Gettext, but for Fluent, see previous discussions in #2780 and #2783.

For kl, the reason we end up with one, other is that that's what we're getting from Intl.PluralRules

Intl.PluralRules.supportedLocalesOf('kl') // [ 'kl' ]

new Intl.PluralRules('kl').resolvedOptions().pluralCategories // [ 'one', 'other' ]

and it's getting its data from the CLDR, which does indeed list one and other as the appropriate kl plural categories.

[flodolo]

To confirm: https://www.unicode.org/cldr/charts/48/supplemental/language_plural_rules.html#kl

[ftyers]

Yes, those are not the ones that the community (the language board) wants, because they don't take into account that numbers higher than 12 generally are used as Danish numbers (with different morphology).

[eemeli]

Does that also influence the pluralization, though? As in, beyond pronouncing the number itself differently, would you say "5 cookies" differently from "15 cookies"? Or are there some other phrases where it's relevant whether the number is Greenlandic or Danish?

[ftyers]

Yes, see discussion here: common-voice/common-voice#5426 :)

[eemeli]

Ah, that makes sense. This seems like something that ought to be fixed in CLDR. Fluent uses that data at runtime, and so even if we were to enable the few-case in Pontoon, it would never be used at runtime -- and you'd end up with "ujaqqat 5-t", for instance.

You mention a language board; has this been discussed with them, or has the issue otherwise been raised at CLDR? We could theoretically add a CLDR data overlay to Firefox, but it would be best to get this fixed for everyone, and not just Firefox users.

[ftyers]

@TinoDidriksen ?