Join the project on Transifex
Translation happens on Transifex. Find the Audacity project at explore.transifex.com/audacity/audacity and:
- Click the Join this project button on the right side.
- Select the language you would like to contribute to from the dropdown.
- Click Join project if the language is available to join, or Request language if it is not listed yet.
Once you are approved as a translator you receive an email notification. The project then appears in your Transifex dashboard and you can start contributing.
Translate strings
- Click Translate at the top right.
- Select the Audacity 4 resource to start editing. The Audacity 3 resource alongside it holds the previous app’s strings.
- Select a string and type the corresponding translation in your language.
- Click Save Changes and move to the next string.
The editor has keyboard shortcuts that speed the workflow up, listed under its overflow menu. The most useful is Tab, which saves the current string and moves straight to the next one.
Releases and string freeze
Source strings are extracted from Audacity’s code and added to Transifex as development goes on, so there is usually something waiting to be translated before a release is announced. Finished translations are pulled back out of Transifex regularly and ship with the next release — there is no need to send files to anyone.
The deadline that matters is the string freeze:
- When the release candidate is built and regression testing starts, the strings for that release are frozen. Historically that lands about two weeks before the release date.
- The team emails the audacity-translation mailing list with the planned release date. That email is your signal that translations are being accepted for that release.
- Later release candidates fix bugs found during testing; they do not normally add new text.
- If something does have to change after the freeze, the team announces it and usually patches the text itself rather than leaving it to you.
Missing a cutoff is not the end of it. Every major release is followed by patch releases, and translations submitted after a cutoff go into the next one.
Translating outside Transifex
You do not have to work in the browser. Transifex will hand you the file for your language, which you can translate in an editor of your choice and upload back — Transifex is still the only place the team collects translations from.
Audacity 4 uses Qt’s translation system, so your language is a .ts file where
Audacity 3 used .po. Tools built around .po files will not open it.
One thing to know before you pick a tool: the strings carry notes about where
in the app each one appears, added specifically to help translators choose the
right wording. POEdit opens .ts files and can sort by context, but it does not
read the context as a message context, so those notes are not available to you
there. Qt Linguist does read
them.
Trying your translation in Audacity
Audacity loads compiled .qm files, not .ts. In Qt Linguist,
File → Release writes audacity_<code>.qm beside your .ts file. Copy it
into Audacity’s locale folder and restart:
- Windows:
C:\Program Files\Audacity 4\locale, or%LOCALAPPDATA%\Audacity\Audacity4\localeif you would rather not write to Program Files - macOS:
~/Library/Application Support/Audacity/Audacity4/locale - Linux:
~/.local/share/Audacity/Audacity4/locale
A file in the user folder is used when it is newer than the one that ships with Audacity, so the copy you just built wins. This works for languages Audacity already ships; a language that is new to Audacity has to come through Transifex first.
When you are happy with it, upload the .ts file back to Transifex.
Join the translator community
Questions, and notice of upcoming releases that need translation, live in two places:
And that’s it. Happy translating!