Pootle is a fascinating piece of software that allows software developers to easily translate their apps, documentation, and web sites into many different languages. When used in conjunction with the Translate Toolkit, and Virtaal, you have everything you need to build in localization to your own app.
I had the pleasure of speaking with Dwayne Bailey, one of the lead developers on this project. When I asked him to describe the Pootle project, this is what he had to say:
“We created 3 tools:
1) Translate Toolkit – this allows us to do word counts, conversion, searches and checks on a large number of localisation formats.
2) Virtaal – a desktop human translation tool, we’ve tried to make a tool that’s easy for a new translator use and learn but also powerful for an experienced translator.
3) Pootle – a web based translation tool.
We developed *Pootle* to allow communities to translate via the web. Pootle has been used by OpenOffice.org, Mozilla, OLPC and many others to allow their communities to localise their software.
With Pootle we hosted a 200 person translation event at Makarera University in Uganda, part of that work is now in the Lugandan translations that will be in Firefox 4.
Pootle really empowers a community to make localisation contribution really easy, it integrates with version control and machine translation making it a pleasure to use for online translation. A recent proprietary software user quite literally watched translations flooding in when they went live with Pootle.”
The project started through the work of a South African organization called Translate.org.za. “In South Africa we have 11 official languages, so we’re rather passionate about language,†Dwayne says. “Translate.org.za decided to translate FOSS into those 11 languages.â€
Localization is important to them, but sometimes it can be difficult. Dwayne also goes on to say, “to reduce the pain and to increase the quality and consistency of our translations we started building localisation tools. Of course these tools can be used by any language.â€
Dwayne tells me that the team has been together since 2001, and is spread from South Africa to Germany, to France and Spain. Because most of the developers are in South Africa, it has made travel to FOSS conferences in Europe and the US difficult. “We’ve overcome this through generous donors and community members in Europe, but it remains a problem for us,†says Dwayne.
Dwayne also has wise words of advice for those just starting out with their open source projects. “Be open. If you can get your conversations out onto your project resources (IRC, email, wik),i it helps others to contribute. Don’t underestimate the effort required to engage with your community. It takes a lot of our time.â€
The Pootle team has very ambitious plans for the future. They are currently involved in a project to help localise software into African languages with a group called ANLoc (The African Network for Localisation). This includes releasing a book on FOSS localization, focusing on the critical issues for programmers. They also plan on refactoring Pootle to incorporate a lot more AJAX.
If localization is important to you, I highly recommend you check out Pootle and the other translation tools available to you from this team.
To download Pootle: http://sourceforge.net/projects/translate/
To donate to this project: http://translate.sourceforge.net/wiki/funders