Translating:Rules

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This page will describe some translation guidelines and best practises for translators. Following these guidelines will increase the quality of the translations.

TODO: write open

1. translate don't customise
2. report enhancements to support
3. translate the message, not the words
4. be aware of the special features of your language, grammar, plural
5. report messages that are hard to translate to support
6. check fuzzy messages and fix warnings
7. don't work alone, try to bring other
8. review, talk, discuss, collaborate
9. if in doubt about the message, ask for clarification and don't assume
10. read the message documentation carefully
11. collaborate in arriving at a consistent style and writing conventions for a language. Translatewiki.net is not always the best place to hold a discussion on these matters. Other projects, especially Wikipedia, usually have larger communities available for discussion. New projects adopted by translatewiki.net may already be partly localised, and may have different style conventions in place. Again, discussion with the project community before changing conventions, if possible, can be expected to have a better outcome than sudden changes to conventions.
12. Style conventions on words, grammar or punctuation should be documented at the portal pages
13. try to avoid technical terms and slang (and report them if found in the source messages)
14. try to avoid English

External Pages

There are helpful suggestions in other projects as well.

• Tips for Good Translations by WordPress