Localizing our website and apps is a very important part of making elementary OS available to as many people as possible. Instead of relying solely on an internal translation team, we use crowdsourcing so that anyone can submit translations with little to no technical knowledge. In order to keep our voice consistent across the entire platform, and to help new translators get started, we’ve put together this translation guide.
Apps are translated through Rosetta: the translation interface hosted on Launchpad. In order to submit translations, you should:
- Have a Launchpad account
- Set your language preferences
- Browse our translatable projects
Once you’ve made a selection, you can provide suggestions for strings that have not yet been translated, or suggest changes to strings that have already been translated. These suggestions will be evaluated by a translation team member and they will choose the most appropriate one. For a more information about Rosetta, you can refer to their documentation.
When translating you may encounter a situation where you have to decide between several ways of saying the same thing. In these situations we refer to the Ubuntu general translator guide, and for language specific issues we follow Ubuntu's team translation guidelines. Following these guides ensure uniform translations, while also allowing anyone to contribute.
Our website is translated through Transifex. In order to submit translations, you should:
- Have a Transifex account
- Join our translation team
For more information about Transifex, you can refer to their documentation.
As with our apps, we follow Ubuntu’s general translator guide, and for language specific issues we follow Ubuntu's team translation guidelines.