Translation process
Translation server
Evernote uses an open-source online tool called Pootle to handle the community translation.
Access levels: anonymous, registered and verified translators
1. Anonymous translators (suggest-only mode, with CAPTCHA)
You can suggest translations even without creating an account. Just navigate to a desired language / project, search for a particular string you want to translate and suggest your translation. Note that suggested translations are subject to review by privileged translators (see below). If you suggest translation anonymously, you will have to provide an answer to a simple question (so-called CAPTCHA) — this is a SPAM-preventing measure.
2. Registered translators (suggest-only mode)
You may want to register at Pootle server for your convenience. This way you can specify which languages and projects you are interested in, and you will no longer be shown the CAPTCHA when suggesting strings.
3. Verified translators (review suggestions, edit and translate strings)
If you want to get extended permissions, that is:
- Ability to review (apply or reject) suggestions provided by other translators,
- Ability to submit new or edit existing translations
Translation projects
In Pootle, you will see several translation projects, one for each version of Evernote.
Once you register and log in, go to your account settings in Pootle and choose the languages and projects you are interested in. You can select a single project, or multiple ones, by shift-clicking on each row (as shown in the image), then click [Save changes]. You can change these settings later.
Translators: suggesting translations and corrections
When you create an account on our Pootle server, you automatically become a translator. This means that you can suggest new translations to any term, phrase or sentence in any project and for any language. To do this, click on a project link, then select langauge. Inside a project, you will see one or more files which contain translatable items. For some projects, there will be just one file, for others there can be a robust directory structure with many files.
Pootle provides nice visual stats on the completion percentage per project, language, direcory or individual file, as shown below.
Clicking on a folder will open that folder (list its contents). Clicking on a file will open it for translation.
In edit mode, you can suggest translations to any item (both translated and not translated), by typing in the translated text and hitting [Suggest], as shown on a picture below. Please note that once you suggest a translation and move on to a next row, your suggestion will only be visible to coordinators until it is approved.
Fuzzy translations (i.e. translations substituted automatically from another translation project, for example) are marked as gray. You can also mark your suggestions as fuzzy if you are not sure about the translation and want to indicate that this translation needs attention.
When translating strings, you may find it helpful to look into similar translations 1, see below provided automatically by our system in the "Translator comments" field. Note that by default this field is a bit narrow, but in most modern browsers you can expand it by dragging the grip 2. This feature can greatly increase your productivity and help make translations more uniform across the projects.
Working with other translators
Translating Evernote into your language may involve several people at a time, and is a collaborative process. We encourage you to correct mistakes that you find, help other translators and communicate with others on our forum. You can always contact us to report service abuse or other rule violations.When will the translation be publicly available?
When you suggest your translations, they are a subject to review by our coordinators, which may take some time. After the string is applied to translation, it will be used in subsequent internal builds of the particular client or service. Once the translation is complete for a particular client or service, we will enable it in regular builds, and it will be open to public.
Get help from other translators
Please visit our localization forum to discuss things with other translators and our moderators, who will be willng to help you in case you have questions.