Translate

Translator’s Handbook

Welcome

Hello, and thanks for getting on board! We really appreciate your contribution to our translation project!

On this platform, you can translate the YITH premium plugins to your language and submit your translations to always be available as part of the plugin package for you and other users. Stop worrying about backing up files and replacing them after every product update. Your translation will always be there once it is submitted and approved.

To get you up to speed with translating, we put together some rules, best practices, and guiding principles. Please take a look at them before you start translating to ensure your translation meets our quality standards. 

Thanks for your support!

Let’s get started.

Terms

In this handbook, we’ll use some terms you might want to get familiar with before you start. Especially if you never translated WordPress plugins or themes before.

  • String: A string is a small translatable part of a plugin or theme. Strings can be as short as a single word or as long as a whole paragraph. On this site, every string appears as an individual unit that can be translated, submitted, and approved.
  • Locale: A locale (as opposed to “local”) is the combination of a language and a regional dialect. Why is this important? Let’s take Spanish as an example. While we would usually consider Spanish to be one single language, it consists of fourteen different locales like Spanish (Argentina), Spanish (Mexico), or Spanish (Spain). The default locale for all of our plugins is English (U.S.). 

General Expectations

To make sure our plugin translations are well-polished, we established a couple of rules. By understanding and following these rules, your translations will improve, and you can keep the workload low for the whole team.

Translate organically

You probably know that different languages have different structures, rhythms, tones, and inflections. Translated messages don’t need to be structured the same way as the English ones: take the presented string and come up with a string that expresses the same message in a natural way for the target language. Even in strings with more structural items, you have the creative freedom to adapt and change if you feel the result will suit your audience better.

Keep it consistent

Alongside spelling and grammar, we see consistency as one of the essential characteristics of our translations. To maintain consistency within and between translations, you can use a glossary and style guide specific to your locale. Use the glossary to look up the preferred translation for particular terms. For terms not included in the glossary, you can use the WordPress.org Consistency tool to see how other projects have translated words or phrases within your locale.

Be careful with machine translation

Using tools like Google translate or DeepL can be an easy way to understand another language’s content. In some cases, it can also speed up the translation process a lot. But you should never submit raw machine translations without manual checking/editing. Usually, those tools don’t keep track of the specific glossary, terminology, consistency, and style needed.