Last October offensive translations made their way into Ubuntu 23.10 due to a lack of quality checks. Because of this, we paused all translations until a new process could be introduced. We are now ready to do this over the next few days and so I’d like to provide a brief overview of the process:
Hopefully there’s nothing surprising in the diagram above!
Members from an existing translation team on launchpad, if you create an account on Weblate let us know and we’ll grant your account the Review role once we’ve confirmed it’s you.
If you want to contribute as a translator, create a weblate account, familiarise yourself with the platform, pick a project in ubuntu-desktop-translation, and happy translating!
Existing translations
We have no reason to not trust currently-merged translations, but going forward reviews are mandatory. This may lead to partially translated apps that do not have a reviewer under this new process. Meaning, translations for some languages will be stalled until a reviewer is found, or, some translations may fall too far behind resulting in their removal. Neither case is ideal and we will address these on a case-by-case basis. We will do our best to ensure previously submitted translations are not overlooked, but as we are a small team please do let us know if we’ve missed something.
Conclusion
As we bring back translations for our Flutter projects, the role of quality checks and community involvement remains a top priority. If you’re interested in contributing or have feedback, your input is invaluable so do let us know. Let’s work together to ensure that Ubuntu continues to speak everyone’s language, accurately and respectfully!
Hello,
I’m a member of the translation team on Launchpad, do I have to let you know about it right here, or somewhere else?
How can I confirm that it’s me?
I translate Afrikaans language for Launchpad.
For the last 5 years, which I am the administrator
of. So you are saying that translate using flutter and abandon the Launchpad translator. Launchpad Translation
Templates. By the way has every translation for
every package on Ubuntu. Unless your shutting
down the launchpad translator ?
We had a few dirty words within the translations
which I reviewed and changed my self.
I’ve told Minwook Shin, @hothead-jung and Nayeon Keum from Korean translators team to reach you out. Let me know if they don’t contact you after few weeks passed - I’ll try to give them some reminder.
I’ve locked the weblate translations again, the setup doesn’t seem to working as intended and we are getting PRs including translations which clearly didn’t get through a reviewer
As a follow up, I’ve unlocked the translations. It seems the way Weblate is working is that the reviewer workflow enforces translation changes to be approved by a reviewer but not new translations (unless someone knows a better way to configure it?). We restored translations and are gating the PR merges through manual reviews using translations tools for potentially offensive content for now…
