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Tips

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 translation.

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.

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 mailing list 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 mailing list 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. 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 the translators mailing list 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 avoid them.

By creating a new ticket and attaching your translation file. Please provide your full name, a contact email address, and the language and country code for your translation
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 and more human-friendly.

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 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.