Joomla! Issue Tracker | Joomla! CMS #46930 - Blog sample data generates Chinese Pinyin aliases when ja-JP is set as default language

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Medium
Build: 5.4-dev
# 46930

Richell
20 Feb 2026

Steps to reproduce the issue

Install Joomla 6.0.3
Set ja-JP (Japanese) as default language for both Site and Administrator
Go to System > Install > Sample Data > Install Blog sample data
Go to Menus and check the aliases of menu items

Expected result

Menu item aliases should be generated from Japanese romanization (e.g. "kensaku" for 検索, "kiji" for 記事)

Actual result

Menu item aliases are generated in Chinese Pinyin:

検索 (Search) → "jian-suo"
記事 (Article) → "ji-shi"
記事の作成 (Create Article) → "ji-shino-zuo-cheng"
サイト設定 (Site Settings) → "saito-she-ding"

This occurs even when ja-JP is the only default language and zh-CN is not installed.

System information (as much as possible)

Joomla version: 6.0.3
ja-JP language pack: 6.0.3.1
PHP version: (8.3.14)
OS: macOS (MAMP) and Linux (Xserver)

Additional comments

The alias generation seems to use Chinese character romanization (Pinyin) instead of Japanese romanization (Hepburn/Kunrei). This may be a bug in the transliteration library used by ApplicationHelper::stringURLSafe().
Reproduced on both macOS (MAMP) and Linux (Xserver shared hosting).
This confirms the issue is not environment-specific.

Richell - open - 20 Feb 2026

joomla-cms-bot - change - 20 Feb 2026

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Added: No Code Attached Yet

joomla-cms-bot - labeled - 20 Feb 2026

brianteeman - comment - 20 Feb 2026

I thought transliteration was done in the localise.php file included in the language pack

aliraza-090 - comment - 20 Feb 2026

Hi, I’m Ali Raza, a final-year CS student and full-stack PHP developer. I’m interested in contributing to Joomla for GSoC 2026. Could someone guide me to beginner-friendly issues?

brianteeman - comment - 20 Feb 2026

@aliraza-090 do you really think that comment is helpful to this issue. Remember every interaction you make with the joomla project before GSOC is like a job interview. First impressions count.

brianteeman - comment - 20 Feb 2026

I can confirm this bug.

It would appear that we are doing the transliteration here

joomla-cms/libraries/src/Language/Language.php

Lines 317 to 322 in 3d6a967

    
           // Check if all symbols were transliterated (contains only ASCII), 
        
           // Otherwise try to use native php function if available 
        
           if (preg_match('/[\\x80-\\xff]/', $string) && \function_exists('transliterator_transliterate') && \function_exists('iconv')) { 
        
               return iconv("UTF-8", "ASCII//TRANSLIT//IGNORE", transliterator_transliterate('Any-Latin; Latin-ASCII; Lower()', $string)); 
        
           }

Drupal has/had the exact same problem and it appears to be a known limitation of using iconv
https://www.drupal.org/project/drupal/issues/2984977
https://groups.drupal.org/node/377438

Other than suggesting you enable Unicode Alias in global configuration I dont have any other suggestions at this time

Richell - close - 21 Feb 2026

Richell - change - 21 Feb 2026

Status	New	⇒	Closed
Closed_Date	0000-00-00 00:00:00	⇒	2026-02-21 03:50:42
Closed_By		⇒	Richell

Richell - change - 21 Feb 2026

Status	Closed	⇒	New
Closed_Date	2026-02-21 03:50:42	⇒
Closed_By	Richell	⇒

Richell - reopen - 21 Feb 2026

Richell - comment - 21 Feb 2026

@brianteeman Thank you for confirming the bug and for the detailed explanation!

I will use the Unicode Alias option as a workaround for now.
I hope this can be properly fixed in a future release so that Japanese users get correct aliases out of the box.

Thanks again for your time!

yashverma2628 - comment - 21 Feb 2026

can i work on this issue ?

brianteeman - comment - 21 Feb 2026

@yashverma2628 The joomla project does not assign issues, anyone is free to submit a pull requests.

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Joomla! Issue Tracker - CMS

[#46930] - Blog sample data generates Chinese Pinyin aliases when ja-JP is set as default language

Steps to reproduce the issue

Expected result

Actual result

System information (as much as possible)

Additional comments

Add a Comment

	// Check if all symbols were transliterated (contains only ASCII),
	// Otherwise try to use native php function if available
	if (preg_match('/[\\x80-\\xff]/', $string) && \function_exists('transliterator_transliterate') && \function_exists('iconv')) {
	return iconv("UTF-8", "ASCII//TRANSLIT//IGNORE", transliterator_transliterate('Any-Latin; Latin-ASCII; Lower()', $string));
	}