New languages under ISO 639 code "art" or "art-x"

I'm not sure Launchpad will support language codes with dashes in them, so this may simply not work technically.

Moreover, we try to be conservative with the languages list to avoid fragmentation, misunderstandings, redundant efforts, politicking, abandoned work, and so on. There has to be a reasonable case that enough people need software translated into a language, and that enough people would be willing to translate to it.

Even most national variations of multi-national languages are discouraged. Spanish as spoken in Mexico, as an example, differs quite noticeably from the same language spoken in Spain, but when it comes to open-source software it only needs separate translations for very limited cases (mainly for legislative terms, I believe). The Spanish-language translators have largely decided that they can do a better, more useful job if they bundle their forces as a single language despite their differences.

For rarer languages we sometimes find that the majority of translations are from files that were accidentally uploaded as the wrong language, or entered as tests by people who didn't realize they were “polluting” the data. An effective translation effort must be able to beat this kind of “pollution.”

We generally draw the line at a non-collective ISO 639 code. If the language doesn't have one, we'd want a very good reason why it needs to be registered in Launchpad.

That's not the answer I was hoping for, but it's what I expected. Thanks for the quick response!

Perhaps you could add some text to the homepage or the "new language" FAQ that explicitly says this. I see other questions in this forum hoping for minority languages, so clearly expectations aren't being set quite right for new users hoping to use LaunchPad for this purpose. It's fine that it's not part of LaunchPad's mission, but setting expectations properly would help the confusion/disappointment. :)