Universe translations in Launchpad

Universe, is one of the four repositories that make up Ubuntu (Main, Multiverse, Restricted and Universe). Until now only translations of packages in Main repository have been available under http://translations.launchpad.net/ubuntu/.

For Universe packages translations that are packaged for current Ubuntu version are used.

To give an example: If geany 0.18 is packaged in the universe for Ubuntu 11.10, translations in that package will be used even if better translations are available in the current version 0.20 (in this case the newest version is packaged for Ubuntu 11.10 but that is not always the case). Furthermore, for Universe packages translations are not taken into account until a new version of the program is packaged and released (translations are not a part of language packs). This has caused a significant delay in availability of newest translations in the past and also made translation more difficult as packages needed to be translated upstream, which caused:

a) lower visibility of translations (one needed to go to upstream project page to be available to translate) b) in many cases the translations workflow is significantly different and more technically challenging, which scares away less technical problems.

To alleviate this issue in the future selected Universe packages are going to be translatable under translations.launchpad.net/ubuntu. Not all universe packages are going to be available for translations since:

• we don't want to get translations.launchpad.net/ubuntu overcrowded
• packages need to be slightly changed in order to be translatable by maintainers

Before this feature is implemented it might be wise to get in contact with selected upstream projects about possibility of translations imports/exports.

Proposed Universe packages to be translated in Launchpad

The purpose of this page is to keep a list of packages, which are considered to be important (often used) and hence should be translatable in LP.