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Overview
You can use Launchpad to help translate free software, both directly with upstream projects, (such as Limewire), and also as packages in distributions such as Ubuntu.
When you're deciding what to translate, think about the following:
- Can you work on the upstream project, rather than the distribution package?
- Do you know and understand the software well enough to know the context of the strings you need to translate?
- Are you familiar with the translation standards you'll need to stick to?
To learn about the processes and standards that a project applies to its translations, you should get in touch with the translation team that manages its localisation into your language. Most projects work with a translation group - an umbrella organisation of many teams - who look after translation quality control. Each translation group assigns teams to look after particular languages.
Note: You don't need to join that team in order to make translations: they exist to review translations.
You can find out which translation team to speak to by:
checking which translation group is associated with the project - visit the project's translations overview page, e.g. https://translations.launchpad.net/silva
- visiting that translation group's overview page and reading its teams list.
Once you're in contact with the team, they'll tell you about their standards and how to stay in touch with them through mailing lists, IRC meetings and so on.
Licensing your translations
One of Launchpad's terms of use is that you agree to license all your translations using the BSD licence. This means that the translations you make are compatible with as many open source licences as possible. There's more on this in our translations licensing FAQ.
When to translate distribution packages
Ubuntu and other operating systems (distributions) use Launchpad to translate the software that they provide to their users. These distributions take work from upstream projects and modify it, usually in subtle ways, to make it suitable for their system and users.
You should translate a distribution's package of a project once you understand the rules, standards, and complexities of translating that particular package and you know why the distribution translation needs to differ from the upstream one.
If the software you want to translate is available to translate both directly as an upstream project (whether inside Launchpad or not) and as a distribution package within Launchpad, you should talk to the upstream project and the relevant Ubuntu translations team to see where your help is most needed.
If you choose to translate Ubuntu packages, you may find the Ubuntu community's guide to translating Ubuntu helpful.
Where to start
Once you've been in touch with the relevant translation team, to learn their standards etc, you can start translation straight away. You don't need any special software or, in most cases, special permissions: all you need are your Launchpad account, your web browser and your translation skills!
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Translatable series for Wordpress |
When you're to get started, you need to choose:
upstream project: which line of development to translate; usually it'll be whichever is selected by default when you visit the project's translations overview page but check with the project
distributions, such as Ubuntu: which package you're going to translate.
Launchpad makes it easy to choose a distribution package
Upstream projects
If you've chosen to translate an upstream project, they'll tell you which
