Translation(s): English - Indonesia - Italiano - 한국어 - Português (Brasil) - Українська - 简体中文
Debian Localization
Contents
If you want to help translate Debian in your language.
Even if you can only spend an hour a week, you will be welcome.
Several language teams use Debian mailing lists to coordinate their work.
If you’re lucky enough to be a speaker of one of these languages, try joining https://lists.debian.org/debian-l10n-<yourlanguage> and follow what’s happening there.
Don’t try to immediately jump in some translation work.
First, participate to peer reviews: comment on others’ translations. Learn about the team’s processes, jargon and habits.
Then, progressively, start working on a few translations: you may want to start with translations of debconf templates: they are short, often easy to do. That’s perfect if you have few time.
If no language team exists for your language, try joining debian-i18n and ask about existing effort for your language. Someone may be able to point you to individuals working on Debian translations (very often along with other free software translation efforts). If not, then you might be named “coordinator” for your language… you may even be asked to work on translating the Debian Installer.
for more info see https://raphaelhertzog.com/2011/03/03/people-behind-debian-christian-perrier-translation-coordinator/
General
Translation Software
Translation tools
Use automatic translation with caution, it can get you up and running for translations, it can help you, but the tools are not yet ready to do a better job than humans, as November 2025. Right now humans do better job than machines and if used, it must be reviewed and then fixed accordingly.
Automatic translation
apertium offers translation for word to word. | |
firefox allows you to select a portion of text, right click and translate locally. |
Other tools
Firefox uses open data and the process is open to be improved, it competes with commercial translation tools in quality. There are tools that can do even better job at translating, but hey will take considerably more time.
It's possible to use zed editor to work with .po files and make use of its integrated AI helpers on the translation process.
References
http://www.fifi.org/cgi-bin/info2www?(gettext)Main+PO+Commands
http://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/manual/html_node/gettext_10.html
https://github.com/kroketio/kotki to translate fast locally with AI on CPU.
Spell checking
When about to submit a translation, checking for typos and spell checking avoids reprocesses.
Team specific
pages written in English
pages written in local languages
in alphabetic order of the language in English: