Time to shake things up! AdGuard moves to a new translation platform
Ad blocking doesn't exist just because a bunch of developers randomly chose to work in this field. It has become a thing and continues to grow solely due to public interest and involvement of a huge number of people. Today, there is an entire community that's united by the desire to make the Internet a cleaner and safer place for everyone.
AdGuard has been in this industry for a long time, and we are lucky enough to have become one of the centers of the ad blocking community. We keep growing and developing because we feel the support of millions of users. Some show it by simply choosing our product, but so, so many go further and help us directly, often even without asking for anything in return.
Users assist us in many areas, and one of the most responsible and fulfilling missions is undoubtedly translating AdGuard products into other laguages. Literally hundreds of volunteers translate AdGuard into dozens of world languages, and we can't express it hard enough how grateful we are for that. The very least we can do for them is provide a convenient and friendly platform for translating. And this brings us over to the main topic of today.
AdGuard has finally moved to a new localization platform! Now Crowdin is the place where our products are translated and the entire translation process is managed. Those who has already tried their hand at translating AdGuard understand why it's such a big deal ;)
Why did our choice fall on Crowdin? How has our translation management system changed? Find the answers to these and other questions below.
New platform — new prospects
After long attempts to get used to OneSky app “peculiarities” we’ve finally realized that the service isn’t what we need to keep growing in terms of content quality. It is absolutely inconvenient for collaborators and AdGuard developers. And that is why we decided to change the platform.
Crowdin, on the contrary, works smoothly and much faster than OneSky app. Furthermore, it provides many useful features such as Global translation memory, machine translations, online editors, etc. It offers a convenient tool for creating issues to phrases and lets translators check phrases in the Voting mode.
All mentioned and many other things made us go for this platform.
We believe Crowdin will help us optimize the translation process — it should save time on translation and problem solving, and as a result, improve the quality of translations.
If you like AdGuard and want to see our app(s) translated into your language, sign up at Crowdin, go to our page and start translating. We are looking forward to seeing you there! :)
We understand that using the new platform may seem quite complicated for users who haven’t used it before, so we’ve written this article with detailed guidelines on how to translate AdGuard on Crowdin to make it easier for you to work with this web service.
What's new in our translation management system?
Basically, nothing has significantly changed in our translation management system on the new platform, except for a couple of little things.
For instance, AdGuard moderators will become Proofreaders on Crowdin, but in fact they will be effectively doing the same.
Proofreaders will continue to:
Approve/disapprove translations;
Look after the relevance of translations;
Answer questions and requests in comments and resolve issues
But we wouldn’t need proofreaders if we didn’t have such active and hard-working translators who have been translating AdGuard for months and even years.
We are very grateful for their dedication, which is why all active volunteers can request a free AdGuard one-year license key for their device(s) as a bonus. For more information, please read this article.
We remind you that all you need to do in order to join us on the new platform as a translator is to sign up/in at Crowdin and go to our repository there.
Perks of being a Proofreader. Wanna join?
What can be better than being an AdGuard translator and contributing to the product that makes the Internet cleaner, faster and safer for users? Of course, only one thing — becoming an AdGuard Proofreader!
Why?
As mentioned above, proofreaders have certain duties. They verify translations made by other volunteers and approve the better versions. Once approved, the translations normally appear in our apps and on our web pages.
Being a proofreader is an important and responsible mission. Sometimes they get requests from admins and managers to translate or proofread some phrases urgently. Our current moderators cope with their duties perfectly, but we are always looking for new talents :)
Since all well-done work should be rewarded, our proofreaders may receive a giftpack containing various AdGuard branded souvenirs after 3-4 months of active participation in translation process.
But that’s not all! Every autumn (October/November) we choose “Proofreader of the Year” (formerly “Moderator of the Year”. So every proofreader has a chance to become the best one and to get even more cool prizes from AdGuard.
If you want to be our proofreader, send your request to translate@adguard.com. Currently, we need proofreaders for Norwegian, Hebrew, Polish and some other languages.
In case you want to contribute to AdGuard in some other way, read the information below.
Our growth and success is in your capable hands
Imagine, how perfect our world would be if all the people always helped each other.
So it is with any matter - if there are people who sincerely wish to help you, then any task and any business you undertake will be successful.
Fortunately, we are surrounded by people who are eager to help us. And if you also want to lend us your hand, there is a lot you can assist us with.
Apart from translating AdGuard on Crowdin there is another way to help AdGuard by contributing to the quality of the content.
If you have something to add to an existing article or you want to correct some annoying mistakes or typos, translate an article into your language or even create a new one, then follow the instructions listed under the link above and participate in updating the Knowledge base.
You wish to contribute to AdGuard but you have no idea how to build grammatically correct sentences? No problem!
Who knows, maybe you're destined to be the best tester of all time!
Do you want to take part in more fundamental stuff like actual ad blocking? All doors are open to you.
There, you've translated AdGuard into your native language, created a couple of rules and tested the new version after that. Now you are satisfied with the app and want to tell friends and relatives about it.
It doesn't really matter whether you have already contributed to AdGuard or not. If you use AdGuard and like it, write about this experience on social networks, websites or in personal blogs.
By contributing to AdGuard, you become part of a big community that fights for users' rights to a clean and secure Internet.
Your contribution will not be left without worthy reward on the part of AdGuard :) We will be more than happy to share free AdGuard licenses with our active contributors. For more information, please read the articles on each participation option.
Hope to see you on our team! :)
