Translation process

Translation server (Pootle)

Evernote uses an online tool called Pootle to handle the community translation. In order to contribute to a translation project, you must first register with Pootle using the 'Register' link at the top of the Pootle page.

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.

Access levels: translators and coordinators

Pootle can provide different roles (access levels) for translators. Evernote uses two roles: translator and coordinator.

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.

Coordinator: reviewing suggestions

In order to control the quality of translation, we also have a role of a coordinator. This is a translator with some additional rights:

• Ability to review translator suggestions and apply them to the project
• Ability to submit new or edit existing translations without review.

If you want to become a coordiantor for a particular project (or several projects) in your language of choice, please contact us. When you contact us, please tell us about yourself and about any relevant translation experience that you have. We will review your request and get back to you. Please note that being a coordinator means more responsibility and takes extra time to review and fix translations. You may also need to interact with other translators on our localization forum, give them advice on how to improve translations, and answer their questions.

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.