Yesterday, the Polyglots team from Nepal announced that WordPress 4.7 has been translated 100% into Nepali. This is the first version of WordPress, after WordPress 4.0, to reach this milestone. Nilambar Sharma, GTE of the Nepali Polyglots team, made this announcement via a post in WordPress.org.
Sharma has been advocating the need to translate WordPress into Nepali since July 2016. In the WordPress Meetup of that month, he gave a presentation, “WordPress in Nepali… Returns”. Then, he noted that WordPress 4.0 had been translated 100% into Nepali but as new versions came out, the numbers of contributors to translation saw a gradual decrease. He added that translating WordPress in Nepali will generate a feeling of “ours” and will extend the reach of WordPress to more Nepali markets and users, opening many doors of opportunities.
Since then, he, with the help of his team, conducted various weekly meetups and Nepali translation day. Now, less than a year later, the team has finally accomplished what it had set out to do. This is a huge feat for the team as well as the Nepali WordPress community. As per the post, the team is also ready for the upcoming WordPress 4.8.
New WordPress translations don’t magically happen. They actually take requires indefatigable manual work. It requires having a nuanced understanding of both languages as well as a decent level of WordPress knowledge.
WordPress contributors often overlook translations. But they are a necessary part of the expanding the software’s use to non-English speaking parts of the world.