Starting a New GNOME Translation Team

Quick Guidelines

If no team for your language is listed in teams database, check first if someone has shown interest in helping in your language on the TranslationProject/TeamBrainstorm page.
Then, when you're ready to begin and you want to officially start a new team, please send an email to announce the new team to the TranslationProject/MailingList gnome-i18n@gnome.org.

It should have a subject like "New team for [your language name] ([your language code])" and contain the name and the email of the person who is the new coordinator for that language (and if one exists, the URL of the Team's page).

Checklist for those starting a new team

If you want to speed up the process, follow these guidelines.

1. Check if there already is a team for your language on teams database: if there isn't, you can go ahead with the next step

2. Subscribe to gnome-i18n mailing list: https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-i18n/

3. Find out the 2- or 3-letter ISO 639-2 or ISO 639-3 code for your language, plus the English name

4. Register in GNOME's issue tracker

5. If you have a mailing list, and want bug reports to go there (recommended): Create a GNOME Gitlab account for your mailing list and log in. On https://gitlab.gnome.org/Teams/Translation/XX (replace XX by your language code), click the Bell dropdown and change it from "Global" to "Watch".

6. Send an announcement to gnome-i18n@gnome.org:

   • Put "New team for [your language name] ([ISO code])" as the subject

   • Include your full name, e-mail address and GitLab account (from step 4)

   • Include English and native (UTF-8-coded) name of the language, along with proper ISO 639 code (from step 3)
   • Include mailing list address (note if you want bugs to go there), along with team web page address

7. Wait until one of TranslationProject/CoordinationTeam responds: if they don't respond in a few days, resend the mail (it might have been lost in spam-protection software).

Trouble resolving

There is no ISO 639 code for my language

If there is neither ISO 639-1 (alpha-2) nor ISO 639-2 (alpha-3) code for your language, you need to first register it:

• Requesting ISO 639-2 code.

Be sure to read criteria to fulfill for getting a ISO 639-2 code or a ISO 639-1 code.

There is already a non-responsive coordinator

Let gnome-i18n@gnome.org know about it, describing for how long have you been trying to reach her or him, and what responses (if any) did you get. Don't forget to CC: the current coordinator in your mail. Ideally, if it turns out that the current coordinator really is inactive, it'd be nice if you have someone who's already a proven contributor ready to replace them.

When current coordinator is the bottleneck for work of other translators and doesn't want to step down or cooperate with others, you should start a dispute by providing all the evidence to the coordinator doing a bad job, CCing TranslationProject/MailingList. Note that only the TranslationProject/CoordinationTeam is authorized to resolve disputes.