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Ukrainian Localization of the Official Ruby Website: A Community Milestone

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Finally, I can share this news without the caveat "if it gets merged" 😄

The official Ruby programming language website now formally supports a Ukrainian version: www.ruby-lang.org/uk.

Some time ago, I visited the main ruby-lang.org site and saw a multitude of available languages... but Ukrainian was conspicuously missing. My immediate thought was: "No way, this must be a bug" 😅. In the spirit of open source, I decided to fix it myself.

So I sat down, performed the translation, submitted the Pull Request, and eventually, it was merged into production.


What was translated in the Ruby Documentation

To ensure a complete user experience for Ukrainian developers, I focused on the core sections:

  • Site Interface: Navigation, header, footer, and the home page.
  • Main Sections: About Ruby, Documentation, Downloads, Community resources, Security, and Privacy policies.
  • Specific Pages: Comprehensive Documentation indexes and FAQ.
  • News/Releases: A selection of recent news content so the Ukrainian version doesn't appear "empty" or abandoned.

Technical Nuance: ua vs uk Language Codes

For those attentive to technical details: Yes, I initially created the locale using the ua code because, well, "Ukraine" 🙂.

However, the ISO standard for the Ukrainian language is uk. In a subsequent PR, we corrected this to align with international standards. Now the localization is both technically correct (uk) and beautiful.


Call to Action: Let's Polish It Together

This is a community effort. If you browse the Ukrainian Ruby site and find:

  • Awkward phrasing or translation
  • Inconsistent terminology
  • Errors or typos

Please open an issue or PR. I would be thrilled to see Ukrainian become a "default" supported language in open source projects, rather than an afterthought.


Related Reading


Sources

  1. Ruby Programming Language - Official Site
  2. Pull Request #3725 - Add Ukrainian localization
  3. Common Locale Data Repository - Language Codes

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