Localization of addons.mozilla.org: What tools do we have and what are needed?

In the world of Mozilla localization, anyone interested can localize Firefox or other Mozilla applications.  Aside from that, there are other web properties that need translation and one of those is the addons.mozilla.org web interface.  I’ve been working with Wil Clouser and others to make sure that we address the AMO needs as we push forward with l10n tools.

Many of you may know about the tools available to translate addons.mozilla.org’s interface from English into another language.  I know Wil has posted a lot of this information in the l10n newsgroup, but it’s worth shining a light on his (and others’) work again as we get closer and closer to supporting and promoting translation software for our l10n community to use if they like.

The first piece of helpful information is the wiki that provides a comprehensive list of steps to completely localize addons.mozilla.org’s interface.  Follow this link to go to that Mozilla wiki page.  I went through this wiki page item-by-item and it very clearly defined what to do and how to become involved.  This type of detail was very helpful for me, someone who is not a localizer, but is craving more infomation to learn about our proces.

Another great site to visit to learn more about the localization tools available to localize addons.mozilla.org is http://remora.stage.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/

If you login with “nobody at mozilla dot org”, with password “test”, you can click on the localization tools link on the right side of the page and see the fairly intuitive translation tools available for localizers.  At this site, I can change the settings to a language that I’d like to translate and begin the process of localizing addons.mozilla.org.  Intuitive indeed…  The menu items on the left navigation area take you through each section that is ready for translating.  In that menu, there are also a couple sections that give translation progress and status.  Please log in and play around a bit.

So what is needed?  From the wiki:

“AMO supports localized metadata about the extensions (like their titles and descriptions) but offers no way for localizers to directly edit them. The responsibility for translation lies solely with the authors. We’re looking at more usable ways to implement the system and still keep a good level of quality and accuracy. In the mean time, add-on authors are given this brief summary on how to get help.”

Any toolset that we endorse and support for localizers to use (stressing again: if the localizer chooses to use a tool) will have to be flexible enough to work with our Addons site.  It will also have to be very secure and integrate well with our process.  Wil has been a great help to me in understanding this stuff.  If you want to contribute, let me know or ping Wil.  I can connect you if you can’t reach Wil.

Our next step:  Wil and I and others are going to be meeting with a few members of our community who are working on projects that might integrate well and solve some of the issues.  I’ve mentioned the Narro project.  Wil has been communicating with Alexandru to see if it is flexible enough to server some of the AMO needs.   A few other developers from the community are out there and we’ve started to set up meetings to look at their code and see what is possible.

Lots of fun going on here…ping me if you have ideas.