The localization community gave it’s approval: Weblate fits our expectations. Many projects have already migrated. It’s time for yours to migrate, because the next Fedora release will mark the end of the old translation platform.

A process that started a year ago

Following the migration plan that was validated during Flock 2019 @ Budapest, we have tested Weblate since September. In January, we asked the community: “It’s time to say if you feel confident the tool can allow us to do our job as a translation community”. Twenty contributors confirmed, and we are now officially using Weblate.

You are welcome to help! The process is easy: just connect with a FAS account and start translating!

Advice and feedback for migrating your project

With 30 projects already using Weblate daily, we have learned a lot about the strengths and weaknesses of the tool.

Remember: Weblate directly interacts with a git repository which should contain both pot and po files. One of the benefits is that translators get notification when new strings arrives, preventing last minute rushes.

If you want to keep it simple:

  • commit pot and po files in your repository,
  • Weblate will open a pull request with translations,
  • update your pot file each time you have string changes,
  • merge Weblate’s pull request before each release.

If you are a big team or have plenty of translators:

  • create a dedicated repository for translators,
  • allow Weblate to commit on this repository,
  • update your pot file often,
  • merge translations before each release (or include it inside your package).

To keep your life easy, Jean-Baptiste will do the first configuration of Weblate and set you as admin.

If you are a free and open source project, you can join us. Even if you never used Zanata before.

You are not using gettext files (po and pot)? No worries, many file formats are supported.

The end of Zanata

The Fedora community may seem big, but don’t expect most translators to connect to multiple places to contribute projects. The Zanata homepage was updated, only DNF and Anaconda are considered as not yet migrated critical projects.

Need help?

Open a ticket https://pagure.io/fedora-l10n/tickets or start a discussion on the translator mailing list.