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__
-Mozilla's [[L10n:Home_Page|L10n]] objective is to offer to as many users as possible Mozilla applications in their language and with a great user experience. This user experience is:
+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.
-* Finding Firefox on the web
-* Installing Firefox
-* Using Firefox
-* Updating Firefox
-* Upgrading Firefox to a new major version
-Because you, what we (Mozilla Corporation people) call a Localizer, are here, we believe you're looking for way to contribute to Mozilla applications in your language and find out what it takes -- you've started at the right place. This is a brief overview of the typical process involved in translating Mozilla applications:
+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.
-* Localizing (translating and customizing) the application
-* Getting your localization to testers (who'll test the quality of your translations and should offer general opinion on your work)
-* Localizing installation and migration (so user's can experience from finding to upgrading in their language of choice)
-* Translating web pages linked from the application
-* Translating Mozilla websites
-The links below explain how to achieve the L10n objectives by getting more involved. (You can also follow these two links in the case you are interested in localizing [http://wiki.mozilla.org/Update:Localizers AMO] or [http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/MDC:Localization_Projects developer documentation]).
+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.
-We are always looking for feedback to improve this page, if you have something to say good or bad please post to the [http://www.mozilla.org/community/developer-forums.html#dev-l10n forum] or [mailto:mic@mozilla.com mail us].
+<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>
+<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>
+<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>
+<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>
+<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>
-= Getting started =
-Your first step is to try to find other community members already working on localization or willing to help out. You should find them on the [[L10n:Teams]] page, which lists the teams by [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_code language code]. If there is not a team yet, please create a wiki page in the L10n:Teams category introducing yourself, following the examples set forth in the other pages.
-The easiest way to expose your localization work to users and testers is to create, what we call a language pack, within our [https://addons.mozilla.org AMO] Add-on infrastructure. By following this route of development you get all the benefits that AMO brings: you don't have to worry about hosting costs, AMO will serve updates to your language pack to your users when they get public, you can create a nice description for your language pack, and in your language, too. Your language pack will continue to work during minor updates, because we're not changing our language strings on stable releases.
+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].
-The negative side of using language packs is that your users won't get a localized install experience of Firefox, including the profile migration dialogs. The in-product webpages will come up in one of the official languages of mozilla.com, bookmarks and search engines will be taken from the build that your users installed originally. If your users decide to upgrade to the next major version, your language packs will stop working, and get disabled like other incompatible Add-ons, until you uploaded a compatible version on AMO again. We are working on improving this process specifically for Language Packs to achieve our objective of a good user experience overall. If you're working on a dialect or a minority language, the disadvantages of language packs are not that bad because the user most likely speaks one of the main languages used by AMO, but for languages spoken by people without a second language supported by the Mozilla community (thus far), getting Firefox out there requires more work.
+[[Category:L10n]]
-There is a detailed description of the [[L10n:Localization_Process_Start]] with links to further documentation and tools in hopes you are still willing to jump into the work of localizing :-).
-= Official Release =
-For your localization to be available directly for download on mozilla.com, there needs to be an official complete release rather than just a language pack add-on. Mozilla evaluates newly emerging localizations to possibly be turned into official localized builds. This depends on quality, popularity and other factors.
-Doing an official release involves, among other things:
-* More translation work (e.g. on installer and migration wizard)
-* Doing localized versions of the web pages built into the product, and the start page
-* Customizing the user experience by, for example, translated bookmarks, possibly different search engines, etc.
-We also get more involved by doing some of the technical checks on the completeness and maturity of your localization. We'll also work with you to make sure that your localization is hooked up at the right places in our build and release process, and that the hooks to external services (such as search and web content handlers) are good for your locale and set up correctly. Once all the additional work is done, we will create up-to-date versions of the product for your language on our three major platforms and offers automatic security updates for it. Your job at this point is to make sure we don't break anything ;-)
-The [[L10n:Becoming an Official Localization]] describes the necessary work and the steps we'll be taking together in more detail.
-Once the official release is completed, your localization will be offered to people coming to the main Mozilla site as one of the language choices. Now it's time to take a step back and party :-)!
-We encourage you to take Mozilla Products in your region to new heights, to grow your community, get more contributors, and much more. And there's always the next major release - so you will want your localization to keep track of the progress of the project. The [[L10n:Localization_Process_End]] talks about this in detail. We would also ask 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 in another language :-)