Launchpad Help > Translations > Translators and Translation Teams in Launchpad

Overview

Launchpad Translators group is a set of teams and individuals working on translating software hosted in Launchpad. It is as a confederation of translation teams.

There is one Launchpad localization team appointed for each language and translating projects hosted by Launchpad into that language.

This is not yet another translations project. We belive that people translating software in the same language should work in the same team, even thought they are working at different software.

We encourage Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, GNOME, KDE, Mozilla, OpenOffice.org and all other translators dedicated to a specific project to join the localization team appointed for their language.

We encourage project maintainers to appoint Launchpad Translators group, as the translation group for their project and set the translation model to structured.

Project maintainers

Every project needs high quality translation that convey with the cultural background and already established guidelines for translating software into each language.

Launchpad Translators group stands for those goals and you will find below a list of steps to follow in order to start using Launchpad Translations (Rosetta) and have your project translated in many languages and in the same time assuring translation quality.

• Before procedding to the next steps, please take a moment and see how to use Launchpad Translations to make translation available for your project. You can find this information at Translating your project help pages

• Chose a translation permissions policy and appoint Launchpad Translators Group for doing the translation. Follow this link to find more info about Choosing permissions policy. We recoomend using the Structured policy, as a measure to assure translation quality.

• The direct link to your project permissions policy is: https://translations.launchpad.net/<YOUR-PROJECT-NAME>/+changetranslators.

• You can contact the https://launchpad.net/~launchpad-translators Launchpad Translators team for announcing things that affect all languages (ex. approaching release, major string changes, string freeze... etc) or a https://translations.launchpad.net/+groups/launchpad-translators/ specific language team for things affecting only one language.

• You can also send an initial message to https://launchpad.net/~launchpad-translators Launchpad Translators team and let them know about your project.

• When you are due to release a new version of your project, contact the team and let them know when you would like to release, in this way translators can better organize their work. It is good to advise them at least two weeks before a release.

• If there are any translations errors or bug in your project please assign them to the https://launchpad.net/~launchpad-translators Launchpad Translators team. We will look into the problem and assign them to the proper team or person.

• For your project Answers section, if people ask about specific translations or localization matters, you can assign those questions to the https://translations.launchpad.net/+groups/launchpad-translators/ Launchpad Translators team. We will try to analyze it and have a knowledgable person take care or it.

Translators

All members of a Launchpad localization teams should be knowledgable in translating software and be aware about the work of other teams from Launchpad or other translations project working outside of Launchpad.

Launchpad translation teams are not the only translation groups in the free software ecosystem. We are aware of other translation groups or projects like the Gnome Translation Project, The Translation Project (GNU), OpenOffice.org or Mozilla localization teams and we promote the collaboration with these projects.

Below is a list of steps you might follow in order to start using Launchpad Translations (Rosetta) for translating your favorite project of distribution in your language.

• Before doing any translation work please take a moment and learn how to use Launchpad for translating projects/operating systems. For more information check the Launchpad Translations help pages

• Consult the list of translations teams and check the team assigned for your language. If there is no team assigned for your language please follow the required step to create a new one. You can find more information about creating a new team at the end of this page.

• Follow the procedure for joining the team for your language. Before joining a team you might be asked to do some translation in order to check your translation skills.
• Follow the rules of your team, communicate and keep in touch with the team.

Launchpad localization teams

• As the coordinator for your team, you act as the primary contact person for the team and are responsible for organizing the other translators in your team. This includes attempting to prevent multiple translators simultaneously attempting translations of the same file.
• Coordinators need to be subscribed to the Launchpad Translators team mailing list LINK-HERE. This is highly recommended for all Launchpad translators, but required for coordinators.

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.

• Join the launchpad translators discussions/announcements list - ADD LINK TO THIS LIST
• Create a wiki page or a web page explaining how translators should work in your team.
  • You can follow the hints from our best practices section and adapt them to your language/team

  • Add your translation guide for your language to the list of translation guides

• If you translation karma is over 5000 go to the final step
• If you are already a coordinator of a translation team, let us know about this, and go to step X

• 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 the final step

• 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.

• Final step - create a lp-l10n-CC team and ask Launchpad Translators Leaders to appoint a your language to this team. We use iso-639 two letters code and if not available we fallback to three letters code.