Software Localization
From a single hard-coded language to a shipping multi-locale build — string extraction, catalogue setup and a translation cycle that runs every release.
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Open source, every language
Great software should not stop at the language barrier.
We are a collective of translators and engineers who localize free and open source projects — from string extraction through to the reviewer who signs off the final build.
Developers
Submit your project and get it into the hands of people who do not read your language. Submit softwareTranslators
Offer a language, join a team and put your name on software used across the world. Offer a language0Locales shipped
0Projects localized
0Words translated
0Active contributors
How it works
Two sides of one open platform
Developers submit software. Translators offer a language. Everything in between is the part we run for you.
Submit
You bring a repository. We audit it for internationalization problems before a single string is sent out.
Extract
Strings are pulled into a catalogue with real context — screenshots, comments, plural rules and a glossary.
Translate
Language teams work in parallel. Every string gets a translator and a separate, named reviewer.
Ship
Catalogues are compiled, tested in a real build, and merged. Then we do it again next release.
Services
Five ways we can help
Pick one, or let us run the whole localization programme end to end.
Linguistic Quality Review (LQA)
An independent, scored review of an existing translation that finds the mistranslated destructive action before your users do.
Learn moreWebsite & Documentation Localization
Marketing pages, help centres and API references translated with the structure — and the hreflang plumbing — intact.
Learn moreTranslation Team Management
We recruit, onboard, mentor and retain the volunteers who translate your project, and build the review structure that keeps quality steady.
Learn morei18n Engineering & Consulting
A codebase audit that fixes the structural problems — concatenated strings, baked-in layout, byte-based text — before translation begins.
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Why it matters
Software in your own language is not a luxury
Roughly three quarters of the world does not use English comfortably. For that majority, an untranslated interface is not merely inconvenient — it is a wall.
- Free software is only free if you can read it.
- Localized projects consistently see higher retention in non-English markets.
- Volunteer translators become long-term contributors, testers and advocates.
- Accessibility and localization solve overlapping problems — both are about not assuming your user is you.
They found seventeen concatenated strings we had lived with for years, and then wrote the lint rule that stops us adding an eighteenth.
Our Brazilian user base tripled in eight months. The only thing that changed was that the interface finally spoke Portuguese.
I joined to fix one typo in the Norwegian build. Three years later I run the team and mentor two new reviewers.
The quality report was the first time anyone gave us a number instead of an opinion about our translations.
The people
Sixteen of the six hundred
Our contributors are maintainers, students, professional linguists and hobbyists. These are a few of the regulars.
Amy
Dwight
GnuMax
Hils
iiKozen
Jarred
Klutzon
Marcos
Matt
NoNumber
OceanWatcher
OT2Sen
Parth
Steven
Sully
Tess
Writing
From the localization notebook
Long, practical write-ups of the problems we keep running into — and what actually solved them.
Engineering
Internationalization Before Translation: An Engineering Field Guide
Most localization projects fail before a translator sees a single string. Here is the engineering work that has to come first — and how to tell whether your codebase is ready.
Community
How to Build and Run a Volunteer Translation Team That Lasts
A language team is a small organisation. It needs a purpose, a structure, a way in and a way up — otherwise it survives exactly as long as its most stubborn volunteer.
Engineering
The Complete Gettext Workflow: POT, PO and MO Files Explained
Gettext is nearly forty years old and still runs a large share of the free software world. Here is the whole pipeline, command by command, including the parts that bite.