So the one thing that I'd say is that completely making it impossible to do untranslated banners would, imo, become a problem. (I do think it should be an option though so that banners get added in automatically as languages get approved or something). For global consultations (or any global discussion) for example we are never going to get all languages (there are just too many and finding translators for smaller languages quickly gets much more difficult). For ours our goal is usually to have a bunch of languages at the start and then ensure that there is a translation button in the banner. That button has a tendency to get a lot of translations and so then I watch the banners closely to approve more as soon as they are available (I tend to 'publish' them as soon as they are first written then move then back to proofreading to allow someone to double check, since I tend to think 'in your language but not the best' is better then 'in english'.

The problem is that without some system like that we would disenfranchise a lot of the languages just because it was harder to find translators from there and that is, in my mind, even worse then the english text showing up.

That's a good argument. We could easily make the "Translate" button appear from shared CentralNotice logic. Unfortunately, the CN banner message group has the tighter permissions than other translations, it requires a CN admin to publish. That might be part of the problem, it really reduces the chance that translation will happen. Another obstacle is that the banner text needs to be defined as a string parameter, which is very much optional, if that step hasn't been taken, then nothing can be translated.

Maybe we should encourage a separate group to form, whose mandate is to make sure CN messages are being translated into the languages they are targeting?

awight, are you still interested in this problem (also formulated as T96552: Add option (disabled by default) to force untranslated centralnotices)? The fallout of the issue is getting bigger.

@Nemo_bis
I'm still interested--where can I read about the fallout? Having some community discussion to point to would help us prioritize this work.