Quoting the Ubuntu philosophy, one of our core values is to provide the ability for every computer user to use Ubuntu in their language of choice. This in turn is made possible by an army of volunteer translators, who throughout the development cycle and beyond, tirelessly put their translation skills to work in an outstanding feat to make a full operating system accessible to millions. As we're ramping up to the Ubuntu 11.10 release in a few day's time, there's another important milestone for ensuring Ubuntu is available in as many languages as possible: the translations deadline on the 6th of October. Up until now, and considering the 80% coverage cut-off, Ubuntu 11.10, the Oneiric Ocelot, is translated in 38 languages, lead by the Slovenian team's heroic effort of becoming the #1 team in the ranking.

Making Oneiric the best translated Ubuntu release ever

Last cycle Ubuntu was fully translated in 43 languages. I think this cycle we should be able to aim for more, and I'm confident that with everyone's help we could reach the 50 fully translated languages mark. There are a few languages that are very close to reaching the 80% translation level:

Basque, Latvian, Hebrew, Uyghur, Albanian, Estonian, Bengali, Punjabi

And others which might need an extra push to climb up the 60% to 70% mark to reach 80%:

Serbian Latin, Hindi, Indonesian, Tamil, Thai, Telugu, Slovak, Arabic, Belarusian, Gujarati

So if you speak any of these or other languages, here's what you can do to help yours reach the 80% level and make it to the list of supported languages:

1. Go to the Ubuntu 11.10 translation statistics page
2. Click on your language to find out which packages need attention
3. Find those packages in the list of Ubuntu translations
4. Translate them!
   • You'll want to contact the translation team for your language or check out their documentation to ensure you're using a consistent terminology
   • They'll also help you get started with translations and answer your questions

Note: the translations statistics are updated daily at 12:00 UTC.

More on translations

• If you want to learn more about translating Ubuntu check out our Translations quickstart guide
• If you want to get in you can follow us on e-mail, on Facebook, identi.ca, twitter and in other ways

And now for something different

If there is any web guru out there who'd like to lend a hand, help with the CSS and the JS code for the stats page would be greatly appreciated. One cool thing I'd like to do for instance is for translators to, once they've clicked on their language, be able to click on a package that needs attention and be taken to the corresponding Launchpad Translations page. This only needs the corresponding rows in the table to be linkified, which is something I've been struggling with and I'm sure would be a five-minute job for an experienced web developer. So if you want to help translators with your web skills, drop a comment here or feel free to submit a bzr branch. Thanks! Looking forward to the best translated Ubuntu release ever! :-)

• Translation schedule. Remember that according to the release schedule translatable messages might be subject to change until the User Interface Freeze on the week of the 25th of August.
• Language packs. During the development cycle, language packs containing translations will be released twice per week except for the freeze periods. This will allow users and translators to quickly see and test the results of translations.
• Test and report bugs. If you notice any issues (e.g. untranslated strings or applications), do check with the translation team for your language first. If you think it is a genuine bug, please report it.
• Learn More. Learn how to start translating Ubuntu and enable millions to use it in their language.

So, new Ubuntu cycle and time for a fresh translations videocast!

Join me tomorrow at the Ustream Ubuntu Translations channel, where I'll give you a summary about the great sessions we had around translations last week at the Ubuntu Developer Summit in Budapest, where we discussed the plans for the next cycle: the Oneiric Ocelot. As usual, feel free to come along, ask your questions and have a chat around translating Ubuntu.

• WHAT: Videocast - UDS O Translations Highlights
• WHEN: Thursday, May. 19th, 15:00 UTC
• WHERE: Ustream Ubuntu Translations channel

Note that if you wish to participate in the online chat, you’ll need to sign up for a ustream account (it doesn’t take more than a couple of minutes), but I’ll also be answering your questions on the #ubuntu-translators IRC channel on Freenode.