WordPress Translation Day 4 Successfully Hosts 77 Local Events in 35 Countries, Recruits 183 New Translators

WordPress Translation Day 4 was held over the weekend. The 24-hour global event hosted 77 local events in 35 countries and the Polyglots team added 183 new contributors to their ranks. The team also designated 12 new GTEs (Global Translation Editor) and 14 PTEs (Project Translation Editor).

Naoko Takano, a Polyglots Team Global Mentor and Japanese GTE, gave an introduction to the event from Tokyo for the livestream. In her presentation she shared some stats on the state of WordPress translation. WordPress is currently available in 201 locales with 614 GTEs, 3,086 PTEs, and 32,585 contributors. The majority of WordPress installs are in locales other than US English, representing an estimated 18% of the web.

Takano also highlighted the top locales installed:

Japanese: 5.9%

German: 5.5%

Spanish: 5.0%

French: 3.8%

English (UK): 3.7%

Locales with most translation contributors include Spanish (2,863), German (2,399), Italian (2,190), Dutch (1,584), and Russian (1,515). These stats show that WordPress still has tremendous opportunity for growth among top world languages with the most native speakers, such as Chinese dialects, Hindi, Aarabic, Bengali, and Portugese.

We are translating WordPress into Persian in Iran on #WPTranslationDay @irwpmeetup @TranslateWP pic.twitter.com/BkHmma1gbP

— Saeed Fard (@saeed_fard) May 11, 2019

Translation Day 4 hosted more local events than previous years with participants in Africa, Asia, Europe, North America, South America and Oceania. Some of these events projected the livestream, online talks, and tweets, enabling attendees to follow along with other participants across the globe.

Energetic groups of Polyglots gathered together to make WordPress more accessible in their languages. Their goals included the following:

Increase the number of PTEs

Increase the number of mentors

Translate the top 200 plugins and themes

Curate Polyglot assets: glossary and rules

Improve the Translate page on Rosetta

500+ strings translated to #Nepali at #WPTranslationDay pic.twitter.com/6nd16X5aMB

— Utsav Singh Rathour (@rathour) May 11, 2019

Bhutan Hosts Its First Meetup in Thimphu for WordPress Translation Day

Some of the newly initiated Polyglots contributors came from Bhutan where the country’s first WordPress meetup was hosted in Thimphu this past weekend. Organizer Ugyen Dorji gathered local developers, designers, and publishers for WordPress Translation Day, adding more contributor to the Dzongkha locale, the national language of Bhutan. The group now has 26 members.

It's my privilege to meet our WordPress core contributors for Dzongkha #WPTranslationDay very first WordPress meetup event for Bhutan and would like to thank each and everyone here to make the event with success. pic.twitter.com/wql9dFpVHO

— Ugyen Dorji (@ugyendzodorji) May 11, 2019

Dorji invited a speaker for the meetup, Tenzin Namgyel, an ICT officer from the Dzongkha Development Commission who is also the locale manager and GTE for Dzongkha. He explained the basics of translating WordPress and the attendees participated in Translation Day via the livestream.

Dorji is passionate about completing the Dzongkha translation, encouraging Dzongkha bloggers, and improving local government websites. Many local government websites, such as the Dzongkha Development Commission, rely on WordPress. As the organizer of the fledgling meetup, Dorji is full of ideas for growing the Bhutanese WordPress community.

“My next plan is to visit the language university and teach them to blog in Dzongkha using WordPress,” he said. “We have plans to gather a group of active Bhutanese WordPress bloggers and host panel talks. WordCamp Thimphu is my goal – to reach and invite more WordPress experts as speakers of the main event and help Bhutanese to grow their careers with WordPress.”

In addition to launching a new WordPress community in Bhutan, participants in the Translation Day event translated thousands of strings and helped new teams make progress towards launching packages for WordPress 5.2. Some of the most popular plugins and themes are now more accessible to the global WordPress user base, thanks to contributions inspired by the virtual event.

Events like this are a reminder of just far-reaching WordPress’ influence is across cultures. The Polyglots team is made up of a diverse and remarkably collaborative community of volunteers. Check out a few of the translation teams below that checked in from around the world with pictures on Twitter.

We’re all set and ready to translate everything #WordPress #WPTranslationDay pic.twitter.com/fCl9gOcrQ5

— Niloufar Firouzmand (@niloomand) May 11, 2019

Having a fantastic #WordPress translation day with folks at Ahmedabad. One step to making our local WordPress awesome.

#WordPress #WPTranslationDay #WordPressPolyglots #India @TranslateWP @WordPress @wpahmedabad @multidots pic.twitter.com/P6HD7ioN8j

— Mukesh Panchal (@mukeshpanchal27) May 12, 2019

Translating some strings with some folks at @weDevs and preparing for WordCamp Dhaka. #WPTranslationDay pic.twitter.com/rVOSu5wWAu

— Lincoln Islam (@niazlincoln) May 12, 2019

Translating #WordPress into multiple languages by the @wpmumbai community.@TechySahil @Fairy_Dharawat @seher_skhan @gounder

Thank you to @EnduranceIn for sponsoring the venue and refreshments. #WPTranslationDay pic.twitter.com/ZtX8vKo7ui

— Meher Bala | @WordCampAsia Organiser (@meherbala) May 11, 2019

#WPTranslationDay in Istanbul was both fun and fruitful. Along with 70 other locations in the world, we contributed #translations to https://t.co/FMvSCHb8fm and #WordPress Rosetta projects. pic.twitter.com/DLfCKHGSZV

— Artbees (@artbees_design) May 11, 2019

Translating #WordPress to #Nepali #WPTranslationDay #WPNepal #Kathmandu pic.twitter.com/I2VbFmGLaZ

— Utsav Singh Rathour (@rathour) May 11, 2019