Content type: Handbook

Translating WordPress is a big responsibility. Distributing a localized version on WordPress, hosted on WordPress.org, is a bigger responsibility. Because WordPress in your language may be downloaded by millions of people all over the world, there are certain expectations the Polyglots Team has before giving you a locale-specific WordPress.org subdomain. What is a Rosetta site? What about forums?…

There are a number of other tools that can be useful in various ways for translation of WordPress projects, some of them are listed below. Just keep in mind that if you translate outside of our main platform then after you finish your translation, you will need to go to translate.wordpress.org and import the relevant gettext…

What is Poedit Poedit is an open-source translation file editor for localizing software interfaces that use gettext, like WordPress core, plugins, and themes. It is available for Windows, macOS, and Linux. With Poedit you can download a POT file with the original WordPress strings and create a .PO file and .MO files with your translations.…

WordPress developers chose to use the GNU gettext localization framework to provide localization infrastructure to WordPress. gettext is a mature, widely-used framework for modular translation of software, and is the de facto standard for localization in the open source/free software realm. gettext uses message-level translation – that is, every “message” displayed to users is translated individually, whether it be a paragraph…

User Roles and Permissions First of all let’s take an overview on which kind of users can work on translate.wordpress.org. There are three user roles in translate.wordpress.org: Guest, Contributor, and Translation Editor. Guest Guests are all users who don’t have any account or are not logged into their WordPress.org account. Guests can see the projects…

Once your translation of WordPress for your language is ready, it’s time to release it so that users can select it on install, from their user dashboards, or download it from your local site (locale.wordpress.org). There are two ways to release translations: Automated Release Packages Manual Release Packages To-do

The WordPress Localization Repository at i18n.svn.wordpress.org is a Subversion repository where official WordPress translations are maintained. The repository is used to store the source strings of WordPress core and the translations of plugins, themes and WordPress core. Some locales are also using it to customize WordPress core like adding a translated readme file or a…

In the Polyglots Contributor Training course, there are related content and quizzes. This page will discuss some of the basics of working with WordPress core, including references back to the Core Contributor Handbook, and information on working with comments, placeholders, and other things that are specific to localizing WordPress. Using Localizations One of the first things you should know…

As a translator, you want to make sure the language of the localized project is well-polished. Establishing and following translation rules might seem like a lot of extra work if you are just starting out. In fact, it helps cut the translation team’s workload by reducing the need for correction and clarification. Below are some…

Keeping a consistent tone throughout your translation is important. We highly recommend that locale managers create both a glossary and style guide for their language. These needn’t be large or complex, but it’s important to cover the edge cases specific to your language. Glossary A glossary for translators is a list of terms with translations.…