WordPress.tv language changes

Introduction

Languages on WordPress.tv are currently managed as tags that are applied to videos. A review is needed on how to deal with languages for 2 reasons:

YouTube: The current language name/slugs are not compatible with YouTube.
Subtitles: The proposed language list for the subtitles is coming from VideoPress and are different from WordPress.tv and YouTube

Therefor I have a proposal below that I would like you all to comment on.

Current As-is situation

On the WordPress.tv back-end videos get a language tag. The tag has a Slug and a Name. Based on the slug you could see all videos in a certain language on the site e.g. https://wordpress.tv/language/germandeutsch/ or in the APIAPI An API or Application Programming Interface is a software intermediary that allows programs to interact with each other and share data in limited, clearly defined ways. e.g. https://wordpress.tv/api/videos.json?language=germandeutsch

When uploading a subtitle on WordPress.tv, the list is taken from VideoPress. Check the full list by inspecting any video page :

YouTube has the most complete list, based on ISO639-1 two-letter codes, and also accepts locales like fr-ca:

Proposal

Languages are pretty stable and, ones set, hardly need a change. A tag as it is today would be sufficient, but it should include the unique codes of all different platforms. Languages should also be added ONLY if they exist on both VideoPress and youTube. If a locale does not exist (fr_BE), but the ‘main’ language (fr) exist, then that could be accepted of course. So the following tags could be created:

Name (English)	slug	wp	glotpress	videopress	YouTube
French	fr	fr_FR	fr	fr	fr
French (France)	fr-fr	fr_FR	fr	fr	fr-FR
French (Belgium)	fr-be	fr_BE	fr-be	fr	fr-BE
Spanish	es	es_ES	es	es	es
Spanish (Spain)	es-es	es_ES	es	es	es-ES
Spanish (Argentina)	es-ar	es_AR	es-ar	es	es-419

A dropdown with the above English names could be used on:

Submit video: https://wordpress.tv/submit-video/
Submit subtitle: https://wordpress.tv/subtitle/?video=96280
Edit post ‘Submitted video’ box and ‘Language’ box: https://wptv.wordpress.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=100795&action=edit

The site should be changed from https://wordpress.tv/language/germandeutsch/ to https://wordpress.tv/language/de

The API would change from h ttps://wordpress.tv/api/videos.json?language=germandeutsch to https://wordpress.tv/api/videos.json?language=de

One doubt: Do we keep both French fr and French (France) fr-fr in the list?

All comments very welcome!

Jono Alderson 7:53 pm on February 16, 2020

We’ll need some SEO considerations – will digest and consider!
Jono Alderson 9:37 am on February 17, 2020
Some thoughts!
- The proposed name/slug/value approach looks great.
- We don’t need fr and fr-fr – we can collapse those down into the generic parent.
- We’ll need to make sure any altered/deleted URLs (the categories, and any videos/pages which were in them) execute a 301 redirect to their new URLURL A specific web address of a website or web page on the Internet, such as a website’s URL www.wordpress.org.
If we’re feeling more ambitious…
It’d be preferable from an SEO perspective to internationalise the whole site, and remove the /language/ component (thus moving the language slug to the root; e.g., https://wordpress.tv/fr-de/{{pages}}/). We could then also provide translations/localisations of individual videos much more cleanly and scalably.

It occurs to me that there are plugins which handle this gracefully (e.g., MultilingualPress, WPML, etc).
- Pascal Casier 2:37 pm on February 17, 2020
  
  Thanks a lot for the input
  
  Concerning We don’t need fr and fr-fr – we can collapse those down into the generic parent. , should we call it ‘French’ or ‘French (France)’?
  
  For the /language/, note that this is not indicating in what language we want the site but shows all videos that we have where that language is spoken. It’s a WordPress categoryCategory The 'category' taxonomy lets you group posts / content together that share a common bond. Categories are pre-defined and broad ranging.. So if we switch from /language/germandeutsch to /language/de, then /language/germandeutsch will act just as /language/whateverweputhere
  But let’s see if there is an easy way to put a 301!
  - Jono Alderson 2:40 pm on February 17, 2020
    
    Hmm. ‘French (France)’ gives us some consistency if we have languages with only one ‘version’, but later decide to expand out? I like that it explicitly demarcates the language/locale!
  - Jono Alderson 3:05 pm on February 17, 2020
    
    It looks like WP will redirect the individual posts, but not the archive itself (nor paginated views of it). Maybe we need an SEO pluginPlugin A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party 😉
  - Lorenzo Fracassi 4:54 pm on February 18, 2020
    
    From language perspective, probably the best solution would be to keep all the locales to specify exactly what dialect is used, for example Belgian French or French French. The data would be correct and it would follow the best practices.
    
    From a usability perspective, however, is it really necessary to distinguish the dialect, given that maybe the speaker isn’t native, or it can be difficult to know exactly which dialect is used?
    For example, I’m italian and if I gave a speech in English, what language code would I use since my English probably is a mixed English?
    Moreover, the locales probably would generate many wrong data, because to have some precise data the uploader must know the exact dialect the speaker used, and it’s not always clear. And again, if the video is edited and uploaded by us, there’s even less chance that we can recognize it.
    
    These are Just my thoughts, I think there’s not a wrong answer, my opinion can be questionable under some aspects, but better consider everything before making a choice
    - Jono Alderson 5:09 pm on February 18, 2020
      
      Why don’t we make locales subcategories? Then, they can be used when known/appropriate, and posts will show up in the parent categoryCategory The 'category' taxonomy lets you group posts / content together that share a common bond. Categories are pre-defined and broad ranging., too.
      - Lorenzo Fracassi 10:37 am on February 21, 2020
        
        Good idea, I like that solution 👍
Naoko Takano 8:07 am on February 19, 2020

I also agree @lorenzof that people will watch videos in other variants. I was chatting with @tokyobiyori about this and she agreed too (about Spanish) 🙂
I’d watch English videos from UK, Australia, India, or any other countries.

Locales may not be as important in this case?
Countries as another type of taxonomyTaxonomy A taxonomy is a way to group things together. In WordPress, some common taxonomies are category, link, tag, or post format. https://codex.wordpress.org/Taxonomies#Default_Taxonomies. may be more relevant so that people can find all contents from, for example, Belgium/Switzerland.

+make.wordpress.org/polyglots
Pascal Casier 6:16 pm on February 22, 2020

fr_BE and fr_FR are similar to 99%, so sticking to the ‘main’ one and not the variants seems very reasonable.

I’m putting all language code possibilities together on https://wp-info.org/tools/languagecodes.php

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WordPress.tv language changes

Introduction

Current As-is situation

Proposal