As the year draws to a close, we take a look back to reflect and take stock. Times change, but traditions remain the same. We have a good one at AdGuard — every year we choose the best contributors and reward them.

Since 2020, we reward not only translators and proofreaders, but also filter developers, beta testers who track down bugs and suggest new features, and community moderators. It is not easy to select the most prominent contributors from a large number of active and committed people but we tried to look objectively and took all their merits into account.

We asked our winners why contributing to AdGuard and being a member of the community is so important to them, and we hope it will be interesting for you to read their answers. Perhaps their enthusiasm will inspire you too!

So, let's reveal the names of the winners! Drumroll please…

Top-7 Crowdin translators and proofreaders

Eduardo Addad de Oliveira — Portuguese and Brazilian Portuguese translator and proofreader

Participating in AdGuard translations in Brazilian Portuguese motivates me to know that translations are used by many people and also because it is an excellent program in terms of privacy.

Görkem Emrah Güler — Turkish translator and proofreader

AdGuard created a filter for the Turkish language years ago and has improved it over time. AdGuard is always improving itself and knows how to evolve; they have released their new AdGuard DNS product. They're also preparing for MV3, AdGuard succeeds in being different from its competitors. I've always translated their products into Turkish while they're developing, because AdGuard always cares and helps its users. While they're so good, I also enjoy translating and helping with translation. It was also a pleasure for me to report some bugs in AdGuard apps. I'm proud, happy and peaceful to be in this beautiful place. Thanks for supporting so many languages. If you have a dream, start somewhere!

NCAA — Danish translator and proofreader

As for reasons why I keep contributing (and find it important to do so), well, the primary reason is helping AdGuard maintain a strong base of Danish users by giving them the opportunity to use AdGuard products in their native language, which is beneficial for the less tech-savvy ones not familiar with English-based technical expressions.
Secondly, I feel that AdGuard is doing great and significant work when it comes to personal data security and privacy matters, not to mention liberating users from the chokehold of pesky and intrusive advertising strategies developed and leveraged by various (shady) market players.
Thirdly, it is my belief that AdGuard is straight-forward in its approach to and communication with its users, without the hidden agendas that sometimes exist with other companies.
Because of this, I am proud to contribute in my own small way to AdGuard, its great team of dedicated employees, and its groundbreaking tech solutions.

Lukas Novotny — Czech translator and proofreader

As a member and recognized translator of XDA Developers, I decided many years ago to start helping translate Android apps. Since at that time I was using AdGuard for Android, which was not completely translated into Czech language, I decided to finish these incomplete translations. Over time, I translated all the remaining AdGuard projects. Now, as a proofreader, I keep all projects up-to-date so that all Czech users can enjoy these apps, programs and websites in their native language.

Oskari Lavinto — Finnish translator and proofreader

While I am not personally super private, it is important to me that I can control my information and AdGuard supports this by developing cool and practical products that allow their users to control data traffic in different ways. I hope that the translations open these products for more Finnish users to enjoy!

Nicolae Liviu — Romanian translator and proofreader

Alfred Spijker — Dutch translator and proofreader

Congratulations! Your ongoing support of translations helps users immediately see new features and important information in their native languages.

As we said, it was tough to choose among so many worthy translators and proofreaders. There are contributors who were very close to making the top list. We see and appreciate the contribution of every AdGuard translator and proofreader and we're always willing to reward them for their efforts with free licenses. If you are among them, just send us a request to translate@adguard.com and we’ll answer you as soon as possible.

Top-5 filter and code contributors, beta testers and forum moderators

And now to the other group of contributors — people who maintain filters, test beta versions, find and report bugs, moderate forums and so on.

Görkem Emrah Güler — a champion among contributors — he helps a lot with reporting bugs, answering questions on our forum, maintaining filters and translating AdGuard!

Boo Berry — AdGuard forum and Telegram group moderator

As a longtime user of AdGuard (starting with the Windows version), and a member/beta tester/moderator of the forums for over 10 years now, it's always been important to me to help others where I can and if I encountered any issues, report them as best as I could so the product could be improved. Why do I do what I do? It's simple, because doing things like helping others who are having issues is the right thing to do. I highly encourage others to follow that example in everything they do.
Over the years, I've enjoyed finding and reporting bugs, providing feedback on new features (and hounding developers with feature requests, haha), and helping other users who are having issues if I can. It's simply been an incredibly rewarding experience, and I'm so happy to see how this community has grown like it has since those early days. Of course, I'll still be here doing what I've always done and who knows maybe in 10 more years I'll be able to look back again and see how far AdGuard has evolved from now to then!

scripthunter7 — contributor to AdGuard filters and scriptlets and Hungarian translator

According to my qualification, I am a software engineer. I appreciate that AdGuard has open sourced many of its projects, helping the community and making many processes transparent. Since I use many of these tools in my own hobby projects, I thought it would be fair to give back to you through my contribution :)
As my free time allows, I also maintain the Hungarian adblock filter list. I believe that AdGuard is by far the best tool for blocking ads and ensuring data protection, this is why I helped finish the Hungarian translation as well, so that people in my country who can't speak English can also use these great tools.
Over the years I've met several great people in the AdGuard / adblocking community. In my opinion, that's the best thing about being part of a community. :)

Justin (jslawler) — bug reporter, contributor to code and translator

AdGuard has always been very receptive towards innovation and bug reporting by end users, with employees all the way from CTO down getting involved with reaching out to users to ensure the message gets across correctly.
On many occasions my suggestions, bug reports, contributions to code, translations and documentation have been accepted, improving not only my experience with the AdGuard products, but every other user also.
To find a company with such willingness to listen to its users and benefit from that is a rare gem in this fast-paced tech world, so contributing to it is something of a high importance to me and something that I hope continues long into the future.
When it comes to the community, AdGuard has a strong following which is incredibly involved with each other aiding where they can. Having people from all occupations and from different areas of the world aiding each other on platforms such as Reddit, Telegram, GitHub and the Forums has always been such a pleasure to be a part of.
Thank you to AdGuard and all the community that make this more than just another product on the internet!

Yuki2718 — contributor to filters and scriptlets

By contributing I'm not only removing web annoyances for user but also protecting them from web threat often delivered by ads.
The answer for the second question is simple, I'm comfortable with working with the filter team members and other nice contributors. They're my source of energy.

And here are people who were very close to this top-5: Ammnt, Contribucious, zubrRB, Valikhan D, Сергей Подкопаев, fernvenue, krystian3w, ssrahul96.

Thank you and all the other contributors not listed for your invaluable assistance! You help AdGuard become better and develop. It would've been a different thing without your guidance.

We will contact the winners to arrange the prizes’ delivery. If you're among the lucky ones, we’ll write you as soon as your gift bag is packed and sent.

P.s. If you're on the list but didn't receive a message from us, please email us at translate@adguard.com.