WordCamp Presentations

I’ll be speaking at WordCamp Netherlands and WordCamp New York in the next few weeks. The topic will of course be any and all questions broadly relating to “internationalizing” WordPress. This includes building translation communities, translating the core code, themes and plugins, GlotPress,…

If you are attending and have any suggestions on what you’d like to hear, drop a comment on this post or give me a shout on Twitter. (the hashtags are #wordcampnl and #wcnyc, respectively)

See you there!

Newcomers to WordPress.org

Say Hola to Chile (es_CL), Oí to Cape Verde (kea) and Ahoj to Slovakia (sk).

Chile and Slovakia are already all set with localized wordpress.org sites, Cape Verde is coming soon (in the meantime, stay tuned for the language files in the repository).

WordCamp Spain 2009

Photo by Cavaletto

The Spanish translation of WordPress.org has had some hiccups, and up to recently was stuck at version 2.7.1 (which, of course, brings some problems to the whole automatic upgrade process). Now, and thanks to the meeting in Barcelona on October, 10th, it looks like a rock-solid translation team is being setup, under the coordination of Fernando Tellado. Just one day after WordCamp, version 2.8.4 was already available for download.

WordCamp Spain itself (much like WordCamp Brazil), was yet another demonstration of how crucial it is for WordPress users and developers to meet in person. The presentations ranged from the technical to the conceptual, and were all, without exception extremely useful. Yet to me the most important factor was probably the networking, watching new friendships and connections being made, and the bubbling of new ideas and new projects.

Creating a spanish language translation team is not without its challenges: not only isn’t spanish (castillian, actually) the only language spoken in Spain (also catalán, llengua valenciana, basque and galician) but it is also spoken in many other countries, most notably a significant portion of Latin America. This was exhaustively debated at WordCamp and I was very glad to see that there’s room for everybody and their variations. Apparently, Peru and Chile are already lining up for a translation of their own.

Check out Wordcamp.es (in spanish) for more details and thorough wrap-up.

Subtitling WordPress.tv videos

WordPress.tv makes it “easy for you to find up-to-date, WordPress-themed video content within a couple of clicks”, and you can now help subtitling whichever video you think needs it.

Beats voice-overs.

Hello world!

Welcome to WordPress.com. This is your first post. Edit or delete it and start blogging!

En français maintenant

Following the announcement of the Japanese and Portuguese official WordPress.com blogs, we now have a French blog, reporting the latest news to the french-speaking users. More languages to follow, stay tuned.

WordPress.org forums, now in Polish

The support forum for WordPress.org in Polish just went live.

Witajcie!

Checking your localized theme or plugin with the Pig Latin plugin

Transforming a theme or plugin to handle several languages is something that can increase the reach of your code manifold, by encouraging the usage of local versions.

The process is extremely well documented on Urban Giraffe’s post (the post is four pages long, check the navigation at the bottom of the post) which includes mostly everything, from the GNU gettext usage on WordPress, to configuring and generating .pot files. Highly recommended reading, together with Ryan’s post, a shorter overview of the process.

At some point, after having inserted all the proper function calls, you will want to test your theme or plugin for localization. This is where the newly released Pig Latin plugin comes in handy: It will allow you to check if all the strings in your plugin or theme are translatable by translating all messages to Pig Latin. For example, if your code is correct, the string “Edit Pages” should appear as “Editay agesPay“. In short, it aims to show text both noticeably different than English and readable. This way you can spot strings, which aren’t translatable, while the interface is stil usable.

Be aware that everything that’s translatable in your WordPress installation will show up as Pig Latin, including the dashboard.

Did you know? New resources in Japanese and Portuguese

Most WordPress.com users are aware that there is a local homepage for their language. Most also know about the official WordPress.com blog.

Did you know that the blog is now, not only being translated, but complemented with local content? The inaugural blogs are in Japanese and Portuguese with soon more languages to follow. If your are a speaker of either language, be sure to go say hello and comment on what’s being said.

WordCamp Brazil 2009

photo by Cláudia Regina

Brazil had it’s first WordCamp on the 21st of June and I had the pleasure of attending and speaking at the event (my talk was about BuddyPress, and the slides are available in portuguese here).

Thanks to the effort of many volunteers, and particularly Cátia Kitahara and Leo Germani, of the Brazilian WordPress Community, the event was a success in bringing together and connecting a whole crowd of brazilian WordPress developers and users, most of whom, up until that day had never met in person.

Funarte in São Paulo welcomed a series of speakers, who talked about and discussed subjects such as WordPress for Designers, Blog Promotion, Hacker Ethics, SEO for WordPress, and case studies of Education Portals, Social Media and the Ministry of Culture (a notable, government sanctioned, WordPress installation and plugin developer). The mood was great and everybody appreciated Matt’s keynote, a “tropical” version of State Of The Word, as presented on WordCamp San Francisco 2009.

Despite the fact that the organizers are developers or designers, not event producers, everything ran smoothly, from registration, the gorgeous t-shirts to the closing session, in which a giant mindmap was created with the collaboration of all participants. So much so, that mere days after the event, they are already planning WordCamp Brazil 2010.

Congratulations everyone. I really enjoyed the event, but what made it really special was the way we were welcomed.

Here are some links:

• #wordcamp-br hashtag on twitter

• Giant mindmap video, by Marcio Okabe

• Speaking at WordCamp, by Daniel Scocco of Daily Blog Tips
• WordCamp Brasil 2009, by Henrique Cintra (in portuguese)
• Tudo o que não dás, perde-se, by Ana Claudia (in portuguese)
• Marcelo Costa’s text (in portuguese)
• WordCamp, by iCaju (in portuguese)
• Cerejuda’s text and pictures (in portuguese)

• Picasa Pictures Album, by Ana Claudia
• Rogério’s Flickr;
• Pedro Germani’s Flickr;
• WordCamp Setup, on my own Flickr
• WordCamp Day, on my own Flickr
• Marcelo Costa’s Flickr;
• Hostnet’s (a sponsor) Flickr;
• Cláudia Regina’s Flickr
• Felipe S. Gomes’ text (in portuguese)