Get Involved

Although those familiar with Australian English would be able to understand US English, it’s still technically a different language. As such, it’s up for translation, and this is where you can contribute!

Start Contributing Today

All you need is your WordPress.org account to login at https://translate.wordpress.org/locale/en-au and find a project you want to translate. This could be your own theme or plugin, or one you use but would really like to see translated anyway. Each string you submit will be validated (usually within a few days), and then you’ll appear as a Translation Contributor on the en_AU Team page.

Using GlotPress

Screenshot of a string in GlotPress being translated.
The “Copy from original” functionality is invaluable for en_* translations.

Take a look at our Glossary page, in particular the spreadsheet link at the bottom. This covers a fair number of the changes Australian English makes to US English.

Process

This applies to all contributors – even plugin and theme authors who want to translate their own project.

The typical process is for you to submit strings for en_AU. This doesn’t require any change in default permissions, and can be done immediately. If you do a great job, and we’re confident in your abilities and intentions, you can then be upgraded to a Plugin Translation Editor (PTE) for a range of plugins (yours, or your favourites / the ones you use etc.). If that goes well over a sustained period of time, you may then apply to be a Global Translation Editor for en_AU.

Why Do We Require This?
While plugin authors want control over their individual plugin, we would like to have consistency for all en_AU users for all plugins and themes. Many of those who request to be a PTE, don’t understand the subtle differences between US English and Australian English, and may not know the information and Glossary. By letting us check over submitted strings, we ensure the quality stays high.

Even having someone do the submissions across projects, and just letting the existing validators do bulk validating of your submitted strings, makes things considerably quicker for the validators. Strings are checked and approved at least a couple of times a week, so plugin and theme authors don’t have long to wait.

Order of Translations

At the moment, other than what might appear each day, there are no fuzzy strings, or strings that are waiting – we keep on top of those a few times a week. Otherwise, we submit and validate strings on popular projects (to bring the benefit to a wider range of people) and projects that maybe no-one but the author has used (to clear off the hundreds of those tiny plugins).

When submitting strings, start on the Development / Stable (code) strings first, and leave the readme projects until afterwards. When a string set reaches 95%, it has the possibility of being delivered to end-users via language packs, so having the code found in everyone’s WP installs showing up as the right language is more beneficial than having the plugin screen contents being translated. For the Readme, there’s no limit – once a string is translated, it is used (after a few minutes), even if all the other strings remain untranslated. The benefit of getting Readme strings to 100%, means that it’s easier to see when any new strings are added to a project, as the overall translation percentage will drop from 100%.

If you’re interested in contributing, just follow the steps above and start contributing today!