DocsWP — WordPress Help

Getting Started at a Contributor Day

This guide is intended to help you get started contributing to the Polyglots team at a Contributor Day. Below is an outline of what the Polyglots team does and how to quickly get started translating WordPress and related projects. If you need any help, talk to your contributor day organizer, or ask in the #polyglots channel on Slack.

Intro to Polyglots

Team Responsibilities

The Polyglots team is large and has a few major responsibilities:

Common Tasks

As a member of the polyglots team, some common tasks that you’ll carry out are:

  • Translating WordPress strings into your language
  • Taking part in and representing the local community at meetups and WordCamps
  • Mentoring new translators and translation editors
  • Creating translation documentation
  • Creating/updating a glossary/style guide for a specific language to ensure translation consistency
  • The Locale Managers and General Translation Editors: Update the WordPress blog in the local language with relevant posts

Prior Knowledge

To be involved with the polyglots teams, you might need the following knowledge:

  • Understanding of WordPress
  • A good grasp of the English language
  • A good grasp of the language you want to translate WordPress into

Polyglots Tools

  • translate.wordpress.org (our translation platform)
  • Local sites (called “Rosetta” sites. e.g. pt.wordpress.org for Portuguese). See Teams list for a list of the currently defined language versions

See the Tools page and its subpages for other useful options.

First Steps

If your language is already being worked on, the easiest way to get involved is by translating strings. To do this, follow the steps described in the How to translate page.

How to Translate

Once you make translation suggestions, you are part of the translation team as a contributor! Over time, you can get more involved as a translation editor for the plugin/theme you just translated, or take up even broader responsibilities if you wish.

If your language has not yet been created, follow the steps on the Requesting a New Locale page to get things started (keep in mind that it can be a long process for the mentor team to set up a new language in the system).

The fastest way to get help on translating WordPress is to join the #polyglots channel on Slack. Log into your WordPress.org profile, then go to http://chat.wordpress.org for instructions on how to log into Slack.

WordPress Contributor Day: Polyglots Team flyer has all the essential information for mentors & contributors.

Essential Resources