L10n (short for “localization”) is the Fedora sub-project dedicated to translation. It is unique in its form and organization because under this label are a set of autonomous teams of speakers. Some statistics will show you the reduction of our community, and invite you to come discuss with us at Flock.

First, the number of unique contributors per week, by time in the project (based on the model of what Matthew Miller does in his “state of Fedora” talk each year at Flock).

Peaks are a classic of our activity, we intervene at a very precise moment in the life cycle of Fedora. The rest is a recurrent work as it goes along. Our most successful year was 2015, when we measured 250 separate contributors—we are at 100 separate contributors in 2019.

Now the number of words translated per week, again by time in the project.

Peaks can be exacerbated when a translation is propagated over several branches of the same software via export and then import, for example anaconda has 16 branches, 6 of which are active (all identical strings will be translated automatically).

Our best year was 2015, when we translated 1,600,000 words, we are at 215,000 words in 2019, all languages combined.

These show us the difficulties our group is facing: fewer contributors, fewer contributions, and almost no retention. The causes are diverse, and as a person, I think that one part is related to our lack of integration in the project processes, and the other part is related to our own l10n processes and the tool that supports them.

If you like languages, or think that translation is a factor of diversity, user empowerment or simply an excellent way to start contributing to free libre open-source software, participate Flock to define a Fedora Goal related to localization and the validation of the translation platform migration plan.