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Brčko, Bosnia & Herzegovina
I'm a part of the tech department for an awesome investigative journalism network called OCCRP. I'm really passionate about open source software, artificial intelligence and information security. My open source contributions are now merged with projects like reddit, elementary OS and the Tor Project. I'm running a personal blog where I share my personal stories. You can connect with me on Twitter: @r3bl_.
Authored Comments
Wow!
This is the most informative AND most motivating article I read in a while!
Translating is (in my opinion) the easiest way to start contributing to an open source project. That's usually my first step in the process. While I'm translating the project, I'm also getting to know the team and inspecting the code. After I finish translating something (or find someone to fill my spot), I usually have a decent knowledge about the inner workings of the project. Because of this it's much easier for me to start contributing to other areas of the project as well.
I'm lucky I live in an area where I speak three languages on a native level. Also, my English skills are getting better and better (I understand everything, but I still have some difficulties with the grammar while I'm writing and speaking) and I know a bit of Dutch as well. Because of that, it's easy for me to find something to translate in ANY open source project I can think of.
But you're right, translating can also be very stressful. As an example, 10 days ago I downloaded a file where I needed to translate more than 200 strings. So I started working on it right away. It took me three or four hours to translate everything (most of the strings were a couple of sentences long), and when I finished, I found out that somebody had already submitted the translation of that file. So, I basically spent a few hours for nothing.
Also, there are some words (like the word "edit") that are pretty difficult to translate in my language, because there's like four or five synonyms for that word that you can use. Because of that, you have to be extremely careful to choose and use one synonym for that word throughout the project. If you're not translating the project alone, you have to speak with the other members of your team so you can agree which translation will you use for those kind of words. As a consequence, users see one word used as a translation for something in one project and another synonym of the same word used as a translation in another project they're using. This confuses the users A LOT.