Translate WordPress

The last post on WordCamp really reminded me just how many of our bloggers are overseas. As we’ve explored more and more ways to allow you to express yourself in your language of choice, the thundering request has always been for a way to translate the dashboard and static parts of your theme.

Well here we are.

I’ve taken a bit of code I worked on a few months ago with Cal Henderson from Flickr and Alex Russell of Dojo and made public a new tool that will allow you to do just what you’ve been asking for: translate.wordpress.com.

Here’s how it works. If you speak English and another language and go to the site and sign in, then it’ll ask you to pick your preferred language. Once you do, you’ll be able to start submitting translations for the different strings it shows you. The easiest way to dive in is to click “Random Translation” and it will bring up a random string for you to translate into your chosen language. If you’re not sure about it, or it has code you don’t understand, just click “skip” and it will give you another. (If you want to learn more about technical translation, check this page out.)

We’ve even made a cool ranking page so you can see which language is winning.

That’s it! We’ll review the translation and then periodically push it live to WordPress.com for everyone to enjoy. Everything is tied to your user account so we know who to thank and credit for different contributions.

I’d love to hear your ideas for how we can expand this in the comments. If you’re a translator and you run into any problems, be sure to let us know through support.