Localization Hackathon in Argentina

From May 20-23, l10n-drivers Jeff Beatty and Delphine Lebédel met with 11 participants from 4 different communities in the city of Buenos Aires (Argentina) for 2 days of localization hacking. These communities represented Spanish from Chile, Spanish from Argentina, Guaraní and one member was from Mozilla Nativo (a community that helps promote indigenous languages in Mozilla products).

This hackathon followed the new 2016 format, as detailed here: https://blog.mozilla.org/l10n/2016/01/08/mozlando-localization-sessions/ – with a few notable differences from this year’s previous experiences.

In fact, we decided to insist more on localization style guides – and integrated a full 2 hours session dedicated solely to their creation. During this allocated time, communities focused themselves entirely on this task and based their work upon the English Style Guide template that the “Translation Quality Team” has created. Some teams decided to divide the work among themselves by sections and each work individually on those – while other communities decided to collaborate as a group – and work their way through each section by discussing and debating each item all together.

We then held a round table to understand what were the take-aways from creating these style guides. Some of the challenges were:
– That the wiki markup was confusing
– That it’s a very long process
– It’s hard for someone to understand the style guide and jump right into it. You need more time to study it, and really understand it
– Some thought it would be easy and suddenly realize they maybe don’t know enough of their own language 😀 Something helpful would be more concrete examples for each part in the English template

Regarded as successes and feedback were:
– That the initial English template is very clear and explains well how to go through the steps
– One community (Spanish from Argentina) almost finished their style guide!
– Guaraní team is doing a Spanish version first and then the Guaraní version
– Everyone has at least a base of work to build upon

Teams did not agree on where these style guides should live: some thought they should be part of the translation tools they use, and others in a wiki or on GitHub. In any case, everyone agreed that this was a great step forward in ensuring quality and consistency across all our Mozilla projects and in the translation work they create.

I would also like to take this opportunity to congratulate the Guaraní community who has recently launched Firefox in their language. This is an excellent achievement. And along with that, they have almost completed Firefox for Android. Congrats!

The Chilean team also managed to finish localizing Firefox for Android during the hackathon. Congratulations to them too!

In all, this event was a great way to touch base with these communities and make sure we are all aligned along the same goals and Mozilla’s mission. Creating style guides was also crucial in initiating a process for them to ensure quality and consistency going forwards.

Thank you to all who participated! You really did an awesome job.

The Buenos Aires Hackathon Participants