Project:News/Newsletter 2012-03

This month's subject: Software updates and documentation

Hello, dear translatewiki.net user.

This is the http://translatewiki.net e-mail newsletter for March 2012. It features news on user interface, workflow features and documentation, and a status report on Translation Rallies. The project's success relies on your continued involvement and enthusiasm, so please try and dedicate 15 minutes a week to updating translations for your favourite project!

Software updates and documentation
Our translation editor was up for a revamp. Besides the current "pop up" editor we have a new embedded translation editor. We have been able to reduce editor loading time often close to zero. Activate it by double clicking on to be translated text. Try it out and give us feedback. We need lots of feedback to be able to make it default editor and work on further improvements within the next months. We hope you like it!

A proofreading feature was added a few months ago. So far, 11,000 translations have been proofread and accepted by others than the original translator. We think this is a huge step forward in formal quality control and we hope that many users will start using it. You can find the feature in the tab "Proofreading" on translation pages. You need access rights, as we think only experienced translators should have this right. You can ask another reviewer to grant you access, or you can request it on the support page.

We acknowledge that the documentation for the features in translatewiki.net and the Translate extension were minimal and often inaccessible or hard to find. We have added help icons on all the pages now that lead you to context relevant documentation. We hope you like it! If you think it is usable for many, please feel free to translate it.

Translation Rallies
Since our last newsletter, there have been two Translation Rallies.

In December 2011 our latest annual Translation Rally around the holidays was held. The results were wonderful again. Almost 45,000 new translations for MediaWiki, Kiwix and Wikipedia Mobile in 121 languages. 38 users shared in the 1,000 Euro bounty. Our thanks go out to all translators that participated.

In January 2012, the developers of the forum software FUDforum, organised a Translation Rally with a total bounty of USD 300. The first 6 translators to meet the rally requirements were to get USD 50 bounty. Within two week the goal was reached with 6,000 more translations and a complete translation for FUDforum in the languages Lithuanian, Tamil, Icelandic, Asturian, Maltese and Basa Banyumasan. Our thanks go out to the FUDforum development community for organising this rally without requiring any translatewiki.net staff help (yay!) and all the translators that participated in the event.

There is more good news: In 2012 we will again be able to hold at least one more Translation Rally. Stay tuned for future newsletters in which we will announce them.

Other noteworthy mentions
Translatewiki.net mostly "does stuff" and as an organisation we are notoriously averse of all things administrative. We hate it. One thing we like to improve is reaching out regularly to you. We would love to inform you on a monthly basis of how our community is able to help real users of real software be more productive, more educated, and more able to get things done. If you care and have the skills to help us, please let us know. We can use your help.

Some highlights:


 * Support for the OpenStreetMap editor Potlatch 2 was added.
 * MediaWiki is preparing a 1.19 release.
 * We are in an advanced state with the Mailman developers to support the product. Some legal hurdles remaining.

If you are a developer of a promising Free and Open Source Software product and you are looking for a great community to localise your product, please get in touch with us!

More detailed news can be found on our News page. Follow translatewiki on Twitter for the latest news.

We welcome feedback about this newsletter. Please let us know by sending a reply to this mail. We will try to accommodate your wishes.

Finally, of the 4,600 receiving this mail only 3,500 people are registered as translator. You may want to finish the steps that will get you the status of translatewiki.net translator.

Siebrand Mazeland

Translatewiki.net staff

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