date: 2019-01-15T05:58:46.000Z
- developer.pidgin.im/wiki/TipsForTranslators
lastmod: 2019-08-21T04:05:48.000Z ### Can I help translate? Yes! Our translations are provided by volunteers. To improve consistency and
quality we prefer to have a designated person or group of people maintain each
If Pidgin already has a translation for your language, please contact the
designated translator(s) and ask if you can help. It's possible they are looking
for someone to take over. You can find their email address in Pidgin's
Help→Translator Information window. Or, for some languages you can try
contacting the translator(s) via
[
Transifex](
https://www.transifex.com/projects/p/pidgin/).
If you're unable to contact the designated translator(s) or if Pidgin does not
yet have a translation for your language, email the [
translators mailinglist](
https://pidgin.im/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/translators) and ask if anyone
is already working on translating that language.
### When should I submit a translation update? The translations are shipped with each Pidgin release, so there is no great
advantage to submitting a translation multiple times during a release cycle. We
announce a string freeze on the [
translators mailinglist](
https://pidgin.im/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/translators) before each
release. This is a promise to you that we will not add any new strings or change
any existing ones. During this time you should finish translating any new
strings and submit a new translation to us.
### Where should I submit a translation update? The preferred method for submitting updated translations is via
[
Transifex](
https://www.transifex.com/projects/p/pidgin/). If you're the
designated translator for your language then you can request to create a new
language team for your language in Transifex (and please also send an email to
list](
https://pidgin.im/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/translators) and let us know!).
If you're opposed to using Transifex there are two other methods you could use
to send us translations. These cause slightly more overhead for us, so we try to
1. By [
creating a new ticket](
https://developer.pidgin.im/newticket) and
attaching your translation file. Please provide your full name, a contact
email address, and the language and country code for your translation
1. Or you can ask a Pidgin developer to give you commit access directly to our
version control system, then commit the translation yourself. Before you commit
a translation update, please strip line numbers from the .po file by running
`XGETTEXT_ARGS=--no-location intltool-update LL`. This makes the diff smaller
### Translation Stats and a .pot File You can see the current translation statistics at
https://developer.pidgin.im/l10n/. There is also a link to the nightly version
of the pidgin.pot at the bottom of the page. The .pot file includes the strings
from our Windows installer. Providing a full translation of this file
automatically ensures that Windows users will be able to have a translated
installer for their convenience.
### How Pidgin Handles Translation Updates * Current translators are always listed in Pidgin's About dialog (Help →
About from Pidgin's Buddy List window) by name, and each translator's e-mail
address is included. Because of this, we need current translators to inform
us if their e-mail address changes.
* Translation updates for each language are accepted ***only*** from its
current translator, except when:
* The current translator has told us he/she wishes to retire from
* The current translator has not submitted an update for at least one year
and does not respond to inquiries.
* The current translator tells us to accept the update and/or treat a new
translator as a co-maintainer of the translation.
* We become aware through verifiable means that the current translator has
In short, this means that if you are not the current translator for a specific
language, we will not normally accept the translation update from you, except as
described above. We do this to minimize confusion among users--we've found over
time that some translators will choose different ways to translate a given word
or phrase, which inevitably confuses users. We apologize for any inconvenience
this may cause, but we believe that following these rules makes translations
* [
Transifex](
https://www.transifex.com/projects/p/pidgin/)
* [
Translation statistics](
https://developer.pidgin.im/l10n/)
* [
Our translators mailing list](
https://pidgin.im/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/translators)
