# Gender neutral German translation

**URL:** <https://meta.discourse.org/t/gender-neutral-german-translation/63126>\
**Category:** Translations\
**Created:** [22 مايو 2017، 9:58ص UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/gender-neutral-german-translation/63126 "2017-05-22T09:58:37Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![zking](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/zking/32/72590_2.png) [@zking](https://meta.discourse.org/u/zking)\
**Post date:** [22 مايو 2017، 9:58ص UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/gender-neutral-german-translation/63126/1 "2017-05-22T09:58:37Z")

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Hi, we’re planning to do a gender neutral German translation of discourse, based on the “official” German translation. Can anybody tell me, how we can achieve this? Is there a way to use Transifex, or is it smart to edit the YAML file directly? Can we commit our version to Github, so others can use it? Of course we also want to make sure, that we can keep the gender neutral translation up to date as discourse evolves.  
thank you, zking

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**Author:** ![sam](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/sam/32/102149_2.png) [@sam](https://meta.discourse.org/u/sam)\
**Post date:** [22 مايو 2017، 3:00م UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/gender-neutral-german-translation/63126/2 "2017-05-22T15:00:19Z")

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@gerhard any idea how something like this could be done?

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**Author:** ![gerhard](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/gerhard/32/119479_2.png) [@gerhard](https://meta.discourse.org/u/gerhard)\
**Post date:** [22 مايو 2017، 3:16م UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/gender-neutral-german-translation/63126/3 "2017-05-22T15:16:19Z")

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First of all I suggest you create our own repository on Transifex. Since Transifex doesn’t support language variations you’ll need to trick it into doing what you want. 😉

1. Use English as source language (since it has the same pluralization rules as German), but upload the German locale files.
2. Configure [auto update for the source files](https://docs.transifex.com/projects/updating-content/#automatically-updating-source-files) by pointing them to the German locale files (raw) on Github.
3. Add German as a language you want to translate.
4. Upload the current German locale files since you don’t want to translate everything again.
5. Change all the translations that refer to gender.
6. Replace the existing German locale files with the new ones in your Discourse instance.

In an ideal world Discourse would allow multiple language fallbacks and language variations (locale customizations in the admin area → de [gender neutral] → de → en), but that’s not possible at the moment. If that were possible you would only need to translate some of the strings on Transifex. So, it would work without step 4 and 6.

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**Author:** ![zking](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/zking/32/72590_2.png) [@zking](https://meta.discourse.org/u/zking)\
**Post date:** [22 مايو 2017، 6:00م UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/gender-neutral-german-translation/63126/4 "2017-05-22T18:00:53Z")

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Hi @gerhard , thank you for your reply. I’ve created a new project on Transifex and set everything up as you suggested. The project is [https://www.transifex.com/habitat-2/discourse-6](https://www.transifex.com/habitat-2/discourse-6), if anybody is interested in joining in ;-). Thank you for your advice!

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**Author:** ![DDo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/ddo/32/142669_2.png) [@DDo](https://meta.discourse.org/u/DDo)\
**Post date:** [8 مارس 2019، 2:50م UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/gender-neutral-german-translation/63126/5 "2019-03-08T14:50:12Z")

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@zking, @gerhard: I found this post and find it truly interesting.

After having created an account with transifex, joining the discourse team as a translator and doing some translation on the official german branch - I’d like to see if a formal german translation would be possible too in this way.

I think it might be easier than a gender neutral version.

But I seem to miss a point: “create our own repository on Transifex” - how do I do that? Do I have an incorrect type of account for something like that?

Thank you for some directions.
