Wondering what localservice1 is in your .po file?

Introduction

Hi, thanks for your interest in localizing addons.mozilla.org. The site is available in so many languages because of people who volunteer their time to make everyone's experience better. An overview of L10n status can be found at https://addons.mozilla.org/localizers.

Steps to localizing AMO in a new language

This is a comprehensive list of steps to completely localize addons.mozilla.org's interface from English into another language.

• You'll need to be an active member of an existing language team or have approval from one of their leaders. If your language's team doesn't exist yet, start here.

• If you don't already have one, create a new AMO Account (Note that this will soon be replaced with BrowserID. This is a wiki, feel free to change when that happens. :)

• Search Bugzilla for the words "AMO Localization (xx)" where xx is your locale code.
  • If a bug appears for your locale, then someone is already working on it. This will be a case by case basis depending on how far along the translation is, but if the bug isn't resolved, I'd suggest commenting in the bug and offering to help there.

• Assuming a bug doesn't exist, create a new bug with a Summary of "AMO Localization (xx)" (replace xx with your locale) and a description announcing your intention to localize AMO for that locale (include your AMO account name, please!). Assign the bug to yourself.

• Join the dev-l10n-web mailing list so you can get notified when strings are added or changed

• Strings can be edited either directly via SVN or via Verbatim, an online tool
  • If you already have an SVN account from another project (like mozilla.com) you should reopen the original bug and ask for additional write permissions to /addons/trunk/site/app/locale/___ where ___ is your locale.
  • If you don't have an SVN account yet, follow these instructions

• Since you've got a bug filed, someone from the AMO team will initialize your language for you in the SVN repository and you'll have two blank .po files - one messages.po and one javascript.po. They are both in the same directory. As an example, the English messages.po file is here (your's will use your locale code): http://svn.mozilla.org/addons/trunk/site/app/locale/en_US/LC_MESSAGES/messages.po
  • If you're not sure what the Plural-Forms are for your language, mention this in the bug and we can help

• Once the language is initialized your bug will be closed and you'll be able to commit changes to your locale's .po file. When you reach 100% translated reopen the bug and the AMO team will enable the locale on the production site.

• You can view your string changes on the site a few minutes afer you commit on https://addons-dev.allizom.org/

What is localservice1 in the .po files

AMO ships with a default set of social media links that people can use to share add-ons (for example, Twitter, Facebook, etc.). We chose the most appropriate social media links for English speakers but realize that those aren't always the most used in other locales. If you would like to add your own services to the sharing options you can use these. The .po file looks like this:

msgid "localservice1"
msgstr ""

msgid "Post to localservice1"
msgstr ""

msgid "http://localservice2/?url={url}&title={title}"
msgstr ""

You should adjust the .po file to replace localservice1 in the msgstrs to be the name of your service. For example, if I wanted to share on Hatena::Bookmark I would adjust the .po file like this (Note that the first msgid, the one with only the name of the service, should remain in ascii characters):

msgid "localservice1"
msgstr "hatenabookmark"

msgid "Post to localservice1"
msgstr "はてなブックマークへ投稿"

msgid "http://localservice1/?url={url}&title={title}"
msgstr "http://b.hatena.ne.jp/append?{url}"

This is a somewhat unique and potentially confusing way to add sharing services (but is also the most convenient for localizers) so feel free to ask the dev-l10n-web mailing list if you have questions.

If you don't want to use local sharing services leave these strings blank

How about the pages behind authentication?

AMO maintains an experiemental version of the site at https://landfill.addons.allizom.org/ which localizers are welcome to have administrative privileges on and can therefore see any part of the site. Learn more

What about the extension metadata?

AMO supports localized metadata about the extensions (like their titles and descriptions) but offers no way for localizers to directly edit them. The responsibility for translation lies solely with the authors. We're looking at more usable ways to implement the system and still keep a good level of quality and accuracy. In the mean time, add-on authors are given this brief summary on how to get help.