Apply to become a translator

Thank you for your interest in our software, one of the most translated open-source projects. Our success is strongly influenced by the amount of translations and support we provide for foreign countries. Since we don't know how to speak all the different languages, we rely on a team of translators which provide language packs for new versions of phpBB and other tools we provide.

Am I the right person for the task?

The only real prerequisite to become a translator is enthusiasm. We admit, there is a lot of work connected to translating the software, but it is worth it. You will help spread phpBB around the world and become a part of our team. Of course a fluent knowledge of English, at least written, is welcome. The same is expected in your local language, having translations of quality is our priority.

Checking the availability of your language

Before jumping into your translation, you must ensure that your language is not already listed on our languages page. If your language is missing, you are free to start to translate phpBB into your language! However, if your language is already listed, you should contact the language package author or authors and ask if you can help as a translator. If it is agreed you can help, ask to have the Translations & International Support Teams Manager add you as an official translator, ensuring you a special rank and an access to a private forum to talk with other official translators and our team members.

Getting original language files

You have to download the British English language pack which will be the basis of your translation.

Cooperating with others

There is a considerate amount of text in those files. It can be overwhelming for one person, so it's strongly recommended to find colleagues to help you out. Feel free to ask for help on the [3.3.x] Translations forum, someone can be interested. For our part, know that we will try to help you out as much as possible. We will send you contact information to any people who were interested in working on your translation, our Style Customisations Team Members will be happy to help you to localise the prosilver and, of course, we are available to answer any questions about technical difficulties you might encounter.

However, working together brings issues, especially in concurrent editing of files. That's why most of our current translators use a distributed revision control system to manage translations. We recommend to use Git as software and GitHub as host because we use them for our projects, so it will be easier for you to fork them and send us your translations.

Start translating

When you open files, you will find pairs of values. The first one is the key used by the system, the second is the text you will be translating. For example:

    'AVATAR_WRONG_FILESIZE'            => 'The avatar’s filesize must be between 0 and %1d %2s.',

We have chosen this line deliberately, as you can see a weird word in it. It's called a placeholder and it's used to hold a place for data which will be inserted by the system later on. They can also look like: %s, %d, %2$s, etc. Do not change them, otherwise the value will not be displayed and it can display error messages on the board! This is probably all that could confuse you if you're new to PHP.

Submit your language package

Once you have finished your translation (only complete language packs are allowed), please send to our Translations & International Support Teams Manager a private message. Thank you!