Using alternative source language in Pontoon

This blog post has been authored in English and translated to Spanish to address Pontoon users who are most impacted by this new feature.

Would you like to localize Firefox to your native language, but you don’t feel confident in using English as a reference language? If you understand another language Firefox is localized into, we have news for you.

In its latest release, Pontoon added support for using localizations as source strings. Instead of the original (English) string, translations from your preferred source locale will be used in the string list and the source string panel.

If a translation isn’t available yet, we’ll show the original string, which will also always be available in the Locales panel if the alternative source locale is used.

Using Spanish (es-ES) as the source locale during localization of Firefox to Guarani (gn).

To use the alternative source locale, simply go to your Settings and select your preferred source locale. If you want to use the original strings used by the project (usually English), select “Default project locale”.

Select your preferred source locale in your Settings.

This feature has been developed by April Bowler, who will be our intern in the Outreachy Round 19, which runs from December 3rd, 2019 to March 3rd, 2020. A whopping 40 bugs have been fixed by 8 outstanding contributors during the Outreachy contribution period and we can’t wait to see what April will come up within the next months.

We hope this latest addition will extend the localization of Firefox and other projects localized on Pontoon beyond English-speaking localizers. As always, if you have suggestions for improvements or run into issues, please let us know.