Thunderbird:Localization

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How To Localize Thunderbird

Mozilla Developer Center docs - How to localize Thunderbird into your language.

Localization Dashboard

The localization dashboard for Thunderbird gives localizers a precise overview of the current status of their localization. Detailed information is available on the l10n dashboard page.

A localization will added to the l10n dashboard on request when it has reached a high-level of completion (> 80%) as shown by the compare-locales output. To request the addition of your locale to the dashboard, file a bug in the Thunderbird product/Build Config component.

Localization Blog

The Thunderbird l10n coordinator, Simon Paquet, has a blog dedicated to Thunderbird localization, where he regularly posts l10n-relevant news and announcements, that are relevant for the l10n community. You can also subscribe to the blog's RSS feed to be notified once new blogposts are posted to the blog.

String Freeze

Schedule

See the Thunderbird 3 release schedule page.

String freeze impact

After a string freeze of a given, no new English (en-US) strings will be added or changed until the release date. This enables localizers to catch up with all the string changes and give them enough time to translate and test all the l10n-specific changes that were made in the release cycle.

This means that all work for a release that might affect the strings on the UI must be finished before the string freeze date.

Breaking the string freeze

There may be late-breaking changes or security fixes after the string freeze, where the benefit of those changes outweighs the cost of breaking the string freeze. In that case developers will have to do the following:

• Add the late-l10n keyword to the relevant bug in [1]
• Post a note into the localization newsgroup mozilla.dev.l10n or the localization mailinglist dev-l10n@lists.mozilla.org
• The note should contain a short description of the change and where it is occurring (e.g. in which part of the UI, which dialog, etc.) to enable localizers to adequately test their localization
• The note should also describe possible implications for localizers in case anything special is going on (e.g. the order of the strings is important)

Locale Tiers

For Thunderbird 3, there are a number of principal locales designated as Tier 1. These are the 10 locales, which are the most important for Thunderbird, because of their number of Thunderbird users or potential for growth.

These locales are being treated as first-class citizens, as important as en-US, which is to say that any Tier 1 locale that does not meet the requirements will block the release of Thunderbird.

Tier 1

The following are P1 (priority 1) locales in order of priority:

* de         -  German
* fr         -  French
* ja         -  Japanese
  ja-JP-mac  -  Japanese on MacOS X
* en-GB      -  British English
* es-ES      -  Spanish (European continent)
* it         -  Italian
* pl         -  Polish
* ru         -  Russian
* nl         -  Dutch
* pt-BR      -  Brazilian Portuguese

Tier 2

The following are P2 (priority 2) locales sorted alphabetically:

* af     -  Afrikaans
* ar     -  Arabian
* be     -  Belorussian
* bg     -  Bulgarian
* ca     -  Catalan
* cs     -  Czech
* da     -  Danish
* el     -  Greek
* es-AR  -  Spanish (Latin America)
* et     -  Estonian
* eu     -  Basque
* fi     -  Finnish
* fy-NL  -  Frisian
* ga-IE  -  Gaelic
* gl     -  Galician
* gu-IN  -  Gujarati (India)
* he     -  Hebrew
* hu     -  Hungarian
* id     -  Indonesian
* is     -  Icelandic
* ka     -  Georgian
* ko     -  Korean
* lt     -  Lithuanian
* mk     -  Macedonian
* mn     -  Mongolian
* nb-NO  -  Norwegian (Bokmal)
* nn-NO  -  Norwegian (Nynorsk)
* pa-IN  -  Punjabi (India)
* pt-PT  -  Portuguese (European continent)
* ro     -  Romanian
* si     -  Sinhala (Sri Lanka)
* sk     -  Slovak
* sl     -  Slovenian
* sq     -  Albanian
* sr     -  Serbian
* sv-SE  -  Swedish
* ta-LK  -  Tamil (Sri Lanka)
* tr     -  Turkish
* uk     -  Ukrainian
* zh-CN  -  Simplified Chinese (Mainland China)
* zh-TW  -  Traditional Chinese (Taiwan)

Locale Status (Trunk)

The locales that are currently shipped for Thunderbird trunk builds (what will become Thunderbird 3) can be found here.

Locale Status (2.0.0.x)

The locales that are currently shipped for Thunderbird 2.0 can be found here.