Switching from Transifex to Crowdin

:bulb: Please visit translate.discourse.org if you want to translate Discourse and all its plugins.

Take a look at Contribute a translation to Discourse if you want to know more.


We are currently thinking about switching from Transifex to Crowdin as a localization platform. Since that decision will impact you – our translators – a lot more than us, we’d like you to posts your thoughts about that.

What will improve?

Crowdin has a multiple features I’m really looking forward to:

  • Support for Message Format: That includes syntax highlighting in the translation UI as well as validations for MF strings.

  • Ability to localize assets: That will allow us to localize the Narrative Bot certificat as well as images in public/images.

  • Versions: It would allow you to work on the translations for stable, beta and master branches. That would potentially open the door to updating translations after a release.

  • Custom languages: It makes it easier to add language variants (e.g. formal German).

  • Awesome interface to translate large documents. We could use it to translate documentation and large strings (FAQ, guidelines, …).

  • In-Context Localization: We are thinking about letting you translate the UI right within Discourse.

Next steps

Over the next couple of weeks I’m planning to set up a project on Crowdin where we can refine our current tools for pulling translations and where you can give it a try as well. I’ll update this topic as things progress.

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The switch is complete. Well, we are still setting everything up to make our internal workflows work with Crowdin, but translating is already possible.

Please visit https://translate.discourse.org and sign up with your email address or your Google or GitHub account.

The documentation on Meta for translating Discourse will be updated soon. If you have any feedback for us or Crowdin, feel free to post it here. I’ll make sure it will get sent to Crowdin if it’s not something we can address.

Also, if you need help with the Crowdin UI, take a look at Online Editor | Crowdin Documentation.

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Hey everyone!

Andriy from Crowdin is here :slight_smile: I’ll try monitoring this topic and answer any questions / requests on Crowdin.

@gerhard Happy to know migration is finished, wishing you all a smooth start.

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I’ve been reading and translating on new Crowdin… but I have some doubts:

On the previous platform there was a group of users who could translate and another level of users could “approve” those translations, and in that way the approved ones pass to the final version.

How is it here?
If a user enters and changes translations, are they valid for the final version automatically? :thinking:

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Not correct. For most languages we had zero review, and all translated but not yet reviewed translations were shipped on Discourse.

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From previous experience with the Spanish language, a “user” had appeared translating any sentence left and right without consulting the other translators and there was trouble, and IMO a disaster.

I don’t want the same thing to happen now.
So I ask the topic of the reviewers with Crowdin.

Before there was some control, and it was easier to control translations.

A “reviewer” (in my case, he had that role), could approve the translations of other translators, or correct to maintain a convention that we had discussed here in the translators sector.

What would it be like now?

I can’t imagine if call me from the staff to “check” the translations. How can I see the new translations? Can you imagine reviewing all the sentences?

How then to control the wrong translations?
Only when they go to the final version and I see them live in my forum with the Spanish language?

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No worries. Crowdin supports a proofreading workflow step too. Approved translations aren’t editable by translators, but they can suggest new translations. That’s actually an improvement over Transifex.

That being said, Spanish is probably going to be one of the languages where someone from our team will do all the reviewing.

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How to activate notification when there´s new content to be translated?
Currently I´m not receiving this and I just can´t find any settings…
Any directions would be appreciated!

I checked and it´s activated but I still don´t receive any messages.

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Yeah, looks like notifications for new strings are a project setting and it is off by default. I enabled it for all our projects. You should get a notification the next time new strings are added.

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Can we put some kind of notice on our Transifex project that it is deprecated? Eventually the whole Transifex account will be turned off in about 30 days.

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I posted an announcement on Transifex. I don’t think there’s anything else we can do. Translations are disabled, so everyone who’s trying to use it should notice it sooner or later.

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Congratulations on moving to Crowdin!
Is there a way to move the account I used to translate Discourse strings from Transifex to Crowdin? I want to keep the history of all the translations.

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I’m sorry, but unfortunately that’s not possible.

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