I have a contact with a French Canadian company : they tell me it's not needed. Same for French Belgium and French Switzerland.

Well, if we have the language available, we should also list it.

Well, if we have the language available, we should also list it.

No !!!
1 translation only ! If it's not needed : do not give work to translator !
https://translate.limesurvey.org/projects/limesurvey-6/fr-ca/default/?filters%5Bstatus%5D=current

If we can not have something like this :

• String came FR-ca translation if translation exist
• Else string came from FR translation if exist
• Else code

@DenisChenu, I agree to that this would be a nice solution.
And as long as there is just 1 (!) string translated for French (Canadian) I think we can easily remove the language.

What was the explanation of your customers for stating that this language is not actually needed? Is the default "French" sufficient?

Is the default "French" sufficient?

According to my client some year ago : yes.

If your client need the translation : they know the string to update.

@DenisChenu, it turns out that this is not really related to error messages or button labels which are usually taken from the translation files. My customer (big, global company) told me that they especially need to be able to have different question texts for French and French Canadian because terms are different at these languages and they receive specific, different question texts for that language.

So after that feedback my conclusion is that we should add that language to the available languages!
I will also ask them if they can contribute by finishing the translation (actually I think 95% of the texts can be taken from the French translation).

@DenisChenu, the user confirmed that they mostly need the French Canadian language for having different question texts. So that is the main purpose of such a fix.
As for the translation: If we could just use the French translation as a base, then the user agreed to provide updated translations for cases at which the phrasing is slightly difficult. -> Would that be possible to add French text as a starting point?

I think it can be best to have a "Specific language" system for some survey.

For this issue/feature : ping @c_schmitz

There is currently no inheritance system for a case like this.
At some point Glotpress (the translation website we use) was testing this in beta (named 'Locale variants', but then decided to drop it right before release and it was never revived - see https://glotpress.blog/2017/07/12/glotpress-and-locale-variants/

LimeSurvey would need a translation inheritance system, lets call it 'Custom language', where you can basically inherit an existing language and apply a few custom translations on top.
But that is quite some work needed.

LimeSurvey would need a translation inheritance system, lets call it 'Custom language', where you can basically inherit an existing language and apply a few custom translations on top.

I like this idea !

But that is quite some work needed.

Oh yes ! And potential issue !

Such an easy to adapt translation system would be really nice. But I also have to admit that it requires quite some effort and only few users will make use of it.
In this case the user requires the additional language not for translating error messages into a rather similar language but to be able to have custom question and answer texts within the survey. For that use case it would be very helpful if the language would get added. And we already have the translation files available. So could this be added to the core if we send a pull request?

I already see this "Feature request" : allow Survey with same language twice on forum. Maybe 2 times.

https://github.com/LimeSurvey/LimeSurvey/pull/4135

@DenisChenu, could you please review this minor feature?
Thanks!

Still unsurfe on decision : we really need Language copy po/mo file without need of update ?

@DenisChenu, @c_schmitz: Even if there is no real need to update the translation since "fr" and "fr-ca" are pretty similar, there are users which want to be able to have their own fr-ca welcome or email or question texts. For many other languages and variations we are offering this and it doesn't really cost us a lot adding this language for the mentioned purpose.