D9 localization server upgrade initiative: taking care of our translation tools for the Drupal community

In April 2022 at Drupal Dev Days in Ghent, a group of volunteers initiated the port of the Drupal community translation server (localize.drupal.org), from Drupal 7 to Drupal 9, based on previous work by Tobias Bähr.

We had a feeling that this platform, being after all an important part of Drupal's infrastructure, does not get the attention it deserves from the community.

If you ever have installed Drupal in any language other than English, you have already (transparently) downloaded translations from Localize, which is also a collaborative tool where contributors from various linguistic and cultural communities coordinate their efforts to get Drupal core and contrib projects translated.

The first phase of this work focuses on porting existing features to Drupal 9. However, we also intend to improve the UI, provide web services (for instance to get statistics per language), address crediting issues, or even integrate efforts around a translation memory tool for Drupal.

We would be particularly interested in knowing of the needs of users from all translation teams. As much as Drupal benefits from being translated in many languages, we would like to provide them with pleasant and efficient tools.

Volunteers will be more than welcome to work on issues during the event.

We will be especially delighted to give this talk at the heart of Europe, remembering, as Umberto Eco once put it, that 'the language of Europe is translation'.