Translation sharing and suggestions

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The same messages crop up in many places. For a simple example, think of how often you’ve seen the phrase “Save as” in many different applications.

This duplication of the same message happens across projects, within different series of the same project and between an upstream project that’s translated in Launchpad and its Ubuntu packages.

There are two ways in which Launchpad can use this to reduce the amount of work needed to translate a project:

• translation suggestions: Launchpad will suggest a translation if it already has one in its database

• translation sharing: when the same English strings appear in different versions (series) of a project, Launchpad will use the same translation across all these versions.

Translation suggestions

Whenever someone makes a translation in Launchpad it becomes part of Launchpad’s global database of translated strings. At the time of writing, there are 1,619,290 English strings that have been translated in up to 320 languages in Launchpad. Check the latest numbers.

When Launchpad spots that you’re about to work on an English message for which it already has one or more translations in your language, it will suggest those translations to you. You can then chose to accept one of the suggestions or create a new translation that’s better suited to the project you’re working with.

This is all possible because when people make translations in Launchpad they agree to license them with the flexible BSD licence.

Translation sharing

Translation sharing can happen both between different series of a project and between a project and its Ubuntu package.

Both start out the same way:

1. Translation sharing happens between templates of the same name in more than one series, or in the project and its Ubuntu package.

2. English strings that are the same across those identically named templates are stored only once.

3. Any change to the translation of each English string for a specific language immediately appears in all these templates.

This means that the work of translating new versions of a project is greatly reduced: whenever a new version (series) of a project is created it will immediately inherit the translations for any English strings that are kept from the earlier version. Thus a new version will start out mostly translated without the need to import old translation files. Any translation work done on the newer version will also keep the translations in the older versions up-to-date and they won’t become stale.

On the other hand, translation reviewers can specifically chooses to diverge one or more of the translations if they need to be different in a specific version.

Similarly, translations made for the Ubuntu package of a project can be shared upstream and vice versa.

How it works differs slightly, depending on whether you’re sharing translations between series of a project or between a project and its Ubuntu package.

Sharing between series

In Launchpad translations between the series of a project are always shared. As soon as a translation is changed in one series it automatically changes in all other series. You don’t need to do anything to enable this type of sharing.

Translation reviewers — i.e. for most projects, that’ll be members of the appropriate translation group, but for projects with an Open translations policy that’s everyone — can choose to diverge a translation for a particular series. Those diverged translations are then shown in the Launchpad UI as being different from the shared translation.

Sharing between a project and its Ubuntu package

Sharing translations between an upstream project and its Ubuntu package works in a similar way. There are some differences, though:

• you must link the relevant project series to its corresponding Ubuntu package

• upstream translations are automatically shared with the Ubuntu package, unless the Ubuntu translators specifically chose a different translation

• if the the upstream project uses Launchpad for translation work, a translation done in the Ubuntu packagage by a translator with the right permissions will also update that translation in the upstream project.

Enabling sharing between a project and its package

To enable translations sharing between a project and its Ubuntu package, you need to:

• link each project series to the relevant Ubuntu package (e.g. link series 1.0 of your project to the Ubuntu package for the Natty distro-series)

• make sure there are templates with the same name for both the project and the package.

If the project is translated in Launchpad, you don’t need to do anything. However, if the project is translated outside Launchpad you’ll need to:

• tell Launchpad where the translation work happens: follow the Configure translations link on the project’s translations overview page

• select an appropriate translations permissions policy

• import the project’s translations into Launchpad: ideally using automatic imports from a Bazaar branch.

Sharing upstream project translations with the Ubuntu package

Once sharing is enabled, Launchpad will automatically copy any new translations from the upstream project to the Ubuntu package.

On the translations web pages Ubuntu translators can chose to translate individual strings differently for Ubuntu.

Sharing Ubuntu package translations with upstream

Upstream projects can manually export Ubuntu translations for use with their project.

Launchpad can also automatically share translations made for the Ubuntu package with the upstream project. To do so, the person making the translation needs to have translation permission &mash; i.e. be a member of the appropriate translations team — for both the Ubuntu package and the project.