Below is a list of ways you can improve the translations quality.

• when you have translated a string, read it again and see if there are any error or the translations sound right in your language. If the translated string does not make sense for you, definelty it is wrong and you should redo/rephrase it.

• Translations consistency is an important aspect of translation quality. You can check the translation of a word / phrase in multiple free software project using the http://open-tran.eu/ Open Tran website

Common/best practice

Below you will find a set of common practices for running a team

• Don't forget about other translators or translations groups. In many cases you or your are not the only one doing translation in the free software ecosystem. Always keep in touch with that other teams are doing and make sure the translation teams for your language are translating free software using the same "language". Try to create or join a communication channel channel common to all translation teams for your language and use it for talking about important aspect that affect all translations.
• Define a procedure for accepting new team members.

  • The acceptance level may vary according to the percentage of already finished translations. For languages with few translators and translations already done team acceptance could be lower than in the case of a language with many translators, translations made and the presence of GTP, OpenOffice , etc upstream translation projects.

  • Before accepting a member you may ask him/her to provide some translation. If the translations are great you may accept the new member. Otherwise giving feedback about why the translation are not good is a great help. Try to use a forum, mailinglist or IRC channel for giving feedback to potential new members.
• Create a webpage/wikipage for the translations guide. This guide should contain:
  • First rule: "If a translation does not make sense for you / your grandmother, definitely it is wrong!".
  • Second rule: "Make your translation useful and adapt to the context. Don't follow always the original text". Like for example "Tile children" may sound funny in many languages so try "Arrange windows as tile". The original text is not always the correct one.

  • a common terminology or a link to a common terminology dictionary or glossary. Don't forget about open-tran.eu . You can also install the glossary used by Romanian teams (here is the code)

  • information about what should be translated and what not
  • specific rules for translating into your language
  • a list of frequent errors.
  • explaining the plurar form for your language and how to use them
  • how you should translate menu accelerators / shortcuts
  • inform the translators about other translation project and how we should cooperate and work together
• Make sure you have a good communication channel for all members of the team or subteam. Try to reach all communication types: mailinglist, forum, IRC channel.

Creating a team

Launchpad Translators Group will appoint one team for each language. To add more teams for a specific language you will need to add them as a subteam of the initial team.

Creating a new Launchpad team for a language and asking to be assigned for that language is only required if already there is no team appointed for that language.

To check the current status you can consult the Launchpad Translators Group in Rosetta.

If there is already a team appointed for a language you can still create your own translation team but in order to translate software in your language you will need to become a subteam of the already appointed team for your language. To do so please ask one of the Launchpad team administrators assigned for you language.

If the Launchpad team assigned for your language is no longer active, please let us know by filling an answer in Launchpad Translations (Rosetta).

Steps to follow for creating a team and appointing to a language.

1. Join the launchpad translators discussions/announcements list - ADD LINK TO THIS LIST
2. Create a wiki page or a web page explaining how translators should work in your team . you can follow the example from our best practices -ADD LINK - and adapt them to your language/team
3. If you translation karma is over 5000 go to step X
4. If you are already a coordinator of a translation team, let us know about this, and go to step X

5. If there is already a GNOME, KDE, OpenOffice.org, Mozilla, etc. upstream project from your language point us some translation you have made for those projects then go to step X

6. If there is no upstream project already set for your language please consider following the required steps in creating one for your language. There is no problem if in the same time you are the coordinator for multiple translation projects.

7. Step X create a lp-l10n-CC team and ask launchpad-translation-leaders to appoint a language to this team. We use iso-639 two letters code and if not available we fallback to three letters code.