Localisation Guide

The general aim of this document is not to replace other well written works but to draw them together. So for instance the section on projects contains information that should help you get started and point you to the documents that are often hard to find. The section of translation should provide a general enough overview of common mistakes and pitfalls. We have found the localisation community very fragmented and hope that through this document we can bring people together and unify information that is out there but in many many different places. The one section that we feel is unique is the guide to developers – they make assumptions about localisation without fully understanding the implications, we complain but honestly there is not one place that can help give a developer and overview of what is needed from them, we hope that the developer section goes a long way to solving that issue.

If you would like to help expand this document then please take a quick look at our editing guidelines.

Start here

If you want some general introductory material about working on the localisation of Free and Open Source Software, maybe you want to have a look at this book produced by the African Network for Localisation:

http://www.africanlocalisation.net/foss-localisation-manual

It is available in English and other languages [1]. These wiki pages here tend to be more detailed, less structured and sometimes more technical.

Reading List

Some useful reading for the soon to be and established localisers. Please add good useful articles to these lists.

Project specific information

Tools

Glossary Tools

Source Control

Other tools

Fonts, characters and rendering

Other localisation

Notes to programmers

Footnote

[1]You can help localize the Anloc manual