I Want to Help Translate

We prefer to have a specific person or group of people maintain the translation for a particular language. If Pidgin already has a translation for the language you want to help with, please contact the translator for that language and ask if there's anything you can do. It's possible they're looking for someone to take over. You can find their email address in Pidgin's About window. Please see below for further details on our procedure for dealing with translation updates.

I Want to Translate to a New Language

Great! We love translations! First you should look at the current translation statistics at ​http://developer.pidgin.im/l10n/. There you can see if there is already a translation for your language and whether this translation is complete and actively maintained. If there is already a translation, you can find the translator's name in the header of the .po file for your language.

The second thing you should do is join the ​translators mailing list and ask if anyone is already working on translating that language. If there is already a translation which is not actively maintained, you can also offer your help.

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 mailing list about 4 days 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?

There are three ways you can submit an updated translation. Please use whichever one you find most convenient:

1. Using ​Transifex. In this case we only accept updates from the translator listed in Pidgin's Help dialog. If you are listed here, and you'd like to start using Transifex, please use the Transifex website to join the translation team for your language, and then email us from the address listed in the Help dialog and ask us to approve your team request.
2. By ​creating a new ticket and attaching your translation file. Also, please provide your full name, a contact email address, and the language and country code for your translation.
3. Or you can bug a Pidgin developer to give you commit access directly to our version control system, then commit the translation yourself.

You should remove location information from the update when submitting a ticket or committing directly to monotone. You can do this using intltool-update as follows:

XGETTEXT_ARGS=--no-location intltool-update LL

where LL is your language code.

Translation Stats and a .pot File

You can see the current translation statistics at ​http://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

We have a small set of rules that we follow in handling the submission of translation updates. Our rules are pretty simple:

• Each language we have a translation for has a current translator. The current translator may be a single person, a small team of two or three people, or a group of several individuals.
• 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 translating Pidgin
  • 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 passed away.

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 better for everyone.