L10n:Localization Process: Difference between revisions

Latest revision as of 14:50, 22 October 2013

Mozilla's localization (L10n) objective is to improve the world by culturally adapting Mozilla products by region and locale and offering them to every user in every region throughout the world. By doing so, we create a world where the open web exists beyond linguistic, cultural, and geographical boundaries. We also pride ourselves on making sure that each user will love their experience with Mozilla products, regardless of language, culture, and region. A user has an awesome experience with Mozilla by learning about, discovering, installing, using, and continually updating their Mozilla products to their latest released versions.

As an open source project, we work closely with communities of volunteer contributors who also care about the fate of the open web. Their contributions to our L10n effort make having an open and accessible web possible. Without their help, the web and Mozilla would not be what it is today. Working together, we can open the web to all and protect user rights all over the world.

The nature of the Mozilla L10n program is deeply rooted in collaboration between volunteer localizers and a lean team of Mozilla staff called the L10n drivers. The process that makes this collaboration efficient and strong can be described in four stages: an initial desire to localize Firefox, the actual localization work, pushing localized versions toward official release status, and maintaining Firefox while jumping into more projects.

Starting a L10n effort

A L10n community is born.

Localizing a project

How Mozilla and you localize Firefox.

Localized release schedule

Putting your localization into the user's hands.

Post-release

More ways to contribute after your first release.

These four stages make up the L10n program. To learn more about any of these, click on any of the links above. To get the big picture, we suggest you start with the green bubble and move from stage to stage.

Since we actively promote open source values, we always try to improve our efforts and welcome your input. Please tell us what you think by joining the discussion either on the L10n forum or the IRC #l10n channel.

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-{{draft}}
+{{L10navbar}}
+__NOTOC__
-Our [[L10n:Home_Page|L10n]] objective is to help you launch as many new languages/locales as we can. This wiki page is meant to give you an overview of what’s involved from start to finish with links to more detail.
+Mozilla's localization (L10n) objective is to improve the world by culturally adapting Mozilla products by region and locale and offering them to every user in every region throughout the world. By doing so, we create a world where the open web exists beyond linguistic, cultural, and geographical boundaries. We also pride ourselves on making sure that each user will love their experience with Mozilla products, regardless of language, culture, and region. A user has an awesome experience with Mozilla by learning about, discovering, installing, using, and continually updating their Mozilla products to their latest released versions.
-I am always looking for feedback to make this page better, so if you have something to say good or bad please post to the forum or [mailto:mic@mozilla.com mail us].
+As an open source project, we work closely with communities of volunteer contributors who also care about the fate of the open web. Their contributions to our L10n effort make having an open and accessible web possible. Without their help, the web and Mozilla would not be what it is today. Working together, we can open the web to all and protect user rights all over the world.
-=Step 1, Volunteer=
+The nature of the Mozilla L10n program is deeply rooted in collaboration between volunteer localizers and a lean team of Mozilla staff called the L10n drivers. The process that makes this collaboration efficient and strong can be described in four stages: an initial desire to localize Firefox, the actual localization work, pushing localized versions toward official release status, and maintaining Firefox while jumping into more projects.
-[[L10n:Localization_Process_Start| STARTs]] when there is a realization that Mozilla is missing another language and there is volunteer who is willing to do the work. The simple steps are:
-* Join an existing team or start a new one (if there isn't one already working on your language)
-* Register, so people know you are working on it and can contact you
-* Check out the en-US tree
-* Clone it
-* Edit the resulting tree to translate all the strings (perhaps with tools)
-* Run some tool which bundles up the result into a language pack
-* Ship it to some friends to test it
-* Check in the result, and iterate.
-=Step 2, Preparation and Building=
+<div style="border-radius: 50px; width: 25%; background-color: #4AA02C; float: left; display: block; margin: 1.5%; border: 1px solid #C4C295; text-align: center; padding: 2.5%; padding-top: 0px"><h2>[[L10n:Starting a localization|Starting a L10n effort]]</h2>A L10n community is born.</div>
-There are [[L10n:Localization_Process_Middle| several stages]] and we will work with you to get your build to users as early as possible. As a new localizer we recommend building a language pack first:
+<div style="border-radius: 50px; width: 25%; background-color: #A2BFF4; float: left; display: block; margin: 1.5%; border: 1px solid #C4C295; text-align: center; padding: 2.5%; padding-top: 0px"><h2>[[L10n:Localizing a project|Localizing a project]]</h2>How Mozilla and you localize Firefox.</div>
-== Language Packs ==
+<div style="border-radius: 50px; width: 25%; background-color: orange; float: left; display: block; margin: 1.5%; border: 1px solid #C4C295; text-align: center; padding: 2.5%; padding-top: 0px"><h2>[[L10n:Becoming an Official Localization|Localized release schedule]]</h2>Putting your localization into the user's hands.</div>
-* Release early and often,
+<div style="border-radius: 50px; width: 92%; background-color: #C0C0C0; float: left; display: block; margin: 1.5%; border: 1px solid #C4C295; text-align: center; padding: 2.5%; padding-top: 0px"><h2>[[L10n:Official Localized Releases|Post-release]]</h2>More ways to contribute after your first release.</div>
-* You don't need to pay attention to Mozilla release schedules
+<div style="border-radius: 10px; background-color: white; border: 3px solid; display: block; padding:20px; margin-top: 20px;">These four stages make up the L10n program. To learn more about any of these, click on any of the links above. To get the big picture, we suggest you start with the green bubble and move from stage to stage.</div>
-* Language packs act just like Add-ons that offer a different language for the user interface
-* Serve updates to your users on your own schedule, as with any other Add-ons
-* Working on a language pack does come with a slightly poorer user experience, though, so you want to work towards full localized builds.
-== Pre Beta ==
-* Mozilla evaluates newly emerging localizations to be included into the release process for official localized builds.
-** We will do some technical checks on the completeness and maturity of your localization.
-* We'll be working together to make sure that your localization is hooked up at the right places in our build and release process, and that the hooks within Firefox to external services (read search, web content handlers) are good for your localization, and set up right and in agreement with those service providers.
-* Your job is to make sure we don't break anything in your release ;-)
-== Beta ==
+Since we actively promote open source values, we always try to improve our efforts and welcome your input. Please tell us what you think by joining the discussion either on the [http://www.mozilla.org/community/developer-forums.html#dev-l10n L10n forum] or the [http://irc.mozilla.org/#l10n IRC #l10n channel].
-* all technical issues should be resolved and everything should be ready to get you into an official release.
-* reach out to as many people in your community as possible, and grow a testing community.
-** Help is provided by Mozilla's QA people
-* Daily builds start happening as this is an iterative process to get a candidate for official release
-= Step 3, Official release =
+[[Category:L10n]]
-[[L10n:Localization_Process_End| Official releases]] stand out against language packs by having a full user experience in the sense that they're offered directly for download on the official Mozilla.com sites, the installer is in your language (if technically possible, thanks, windows), the migration wizard is localized.
-* localizers provide localized versions of our in-product web pages for support links and the start page.
-* You will have translated bookmarks and possibly different search engines.
-* Mozilla creates up-to-date versions of Firefox for all official languages on our three major platforms and offers automatic security updates for these.
-At this stage, all your testing reports have come in, bugs that may have been found got fixed. When this happens, your build will be offered to people coming to the main Mozilla site as one of the drop down language choices. Now it's time to take a step back and party :-)!
-The Mozilla project gives you room to take Firefox in your region to new heights, to grow your community, get more contributors, and much more. And then there's always the next major release, so you want to follow the progress of the project. We would also like you to tell other people about your experience so that we can grow our Localizer and Developer community so we can do this all over again :-)