When I was doing my keynote at the bDigital Global Congress, I discussed the fact that localization teams where very important for Mozilla. In this regard, Spain is a great example of this, since there are several co-official languages on top of Spanish (also called Castellano), including Basque, Catalan and Galego (spoken in Galicia). We're lucky to have versions of Firefox available in Basque, Catalan and Spanish, but for now there is no version of Firefox in Galego. In my talk, I mentioned this, and I encouraged the Galician community to join us and build a version of Firefox in Galego. What I did not know is that the situation is currently changing. While there is not yet a Galician Firefox, the Galician local government (Xunta de Galicia) has created language pack for Gallego. It has already been downloaded 8055 times from their site on the past 12 months. There is also a bug report in Bugzilla on this very topic.
I honestly did not want to sound controversial to the Galician community, but it sounds like I was. Well, I should have known better!
The good news is also that there is already a Galego language pack for Firefox 2 hosted on AMO, along with a dictionary. I guess that the next step is to discuss with the Galician localization team how to work together for CVS integration, but I'll leave the Mozilla L10n team deal with this: I think I've said enough stupid things for the week 
Update (1:30 AM): The Xunta asks me for an official statement, so here it is, for the record:
There is absolutely no discriminatory policy against he Galician language. There is though, some lack of information of my part, as I did not know when I did my talk in Barcelona, that a Galego language pack was available. And there is misunderstanding when people think I ignored this on purpose. The truth is actually much simpler : I just did not know. Now, I know, and I rejoice that Firefox 2 is available in Galego via a language pack. I do hope that Firefox 3 will be available in Galego soon, as Mancomun, the Xunta and Mozilla work together in the same direction.
8 réactions
1 De xo - 23/05/2008, 01:02
'Galician language' is portuguese. Our language is internacional, despite much people in Spain and in Galiza want to write it like spanish, making the Galego a 'different language' from portuguese.
http://www.agal-gz.org/manifesto08/
2 De Pailan - 23/05/2008, 14:51
So, there aren't a Brazilian and a European Portuguese versions, and there's only the one and universal Portuguese translation?
3 De Trisquel - 23/05/2008, 15:11
Xo, when I was a child people Franco-teachers told me that Galician was a dialect of the Castillian language. Of course it isn´t, but even with the Castillian invation we have the Galego, and I am so proud of it. The same that old Galician-portuguese is father of Galician, Portuguese and Brasilian portuguese.
Nitot, I think that you omited the older report in Bugzilla (2005) about Galician language. You must read it to understand all
4 De Adrián - 23/05/2008, 17:00
I'm happy to read this post.
I hope these changes get avaible as soon as posible. And also, we can get a gmail translated into galego.
And, also, I want to to say, that is not true that galician and potugese are teh same language. If this was true and we were only talking about a change in the orftography it could be posible for a galician speaker to talk in portuguese and this is not posible. Galician speakers don't know how to talk in portugese properly. The ortography is another war and I agree with the fact that the actual ortography of the galego is an invention and it only attends to make galego part of spainish and make it dissapear.
But, this is my opinion.
Thank you again and I I hope more news.
5 De gl - 23/05/2008, 18:31
Thank you for your support to the Galician version of Firefox, Tristan! I'm now sure it'll soon be available at the official Firefox website.
Firefox is just great. It's my everyday browser at work (as it increases my productivity) and at home!
6 De xo - 23/05/2008, 22:45
Galician people speaks portuguese properly everyday, portuguese of Galiza.
Galego is a different language of Portuguese or Brasilian, like Spanish is a different language of Argentina's language or Venezuela's language, or like english of England is a different language of Australia's english, etc.
I speak Galego and I am proud of it.
OUR LANGUAGE IS INTERNATIONAL, WE SHOULD WRITE IT LIKE OTHER GALICIAN/PORTUGUESE USERS OF OTHER COUNTRIES, NOT IN SPANISH.
7 De xo - 23/05/2008, 23:06
http://www.necco.ca/faq_acordo_orto...
THESE ARE FIRST WORDS OF THE INTERNATIONAL AGREEMENT FOR PORTUGUESE LANGUAGE:
"Considerando que o projecto de texto de ortografia unificada de língua portuguesa aprovado em Lisboa, em 12 de Outubro de 1990, pela Academia das Ciências de Lisboa, Academia Brasileira de Letras e delegações de Angola, Cabo Verde, Guiné-Bissau, Moçambique e São Tomé e Príncipe, com a adesão da delegação de observadores da Galiza, constitui um passo importante para a defesa da unidade essencial da língua portuguesa e para o seu prestigio internacional,...
IT CONTAINS MANY GENUINE GALICIAN WORDS (AS 'LÓSTREGO') AS EXAMPLES OF OUR INTERNATIONAL LANGUAGE
8 De Nemigo - 24/05/2008, 13:00
it's ok!
Galego is available in firefox ever
Portuguese and galego is a diferent language oral and writing style
regards