Gabrielsalazardotblog WPCredits

My first contributions went to the WooCommerce project in the es_CR locale on

translate.wordpress.org.

The mechanics are simpler than I expected. You open the project, filter by

untranslated strings, double click a row, type the translation, and click

Suggest. There is no application process and no permission to request. Anyone

with a WordPress.org account can suggest a translation, which was surprising for

a project this size.

What took longer to understand was what happens next. After suggesting my first

strings I went looking for them in my WordPress.org profile and found nothing. I

assumed I had done something wrong. What was actually happening is that

suggestions sit in a Waiting state until a General Translation Editor for the

locale reviews them, and they only count as contributions once approved. The

Waiting filter on the project page is where they live in the meantime.

That confusion was useful. It made me read the Translator Handbook properly

instead of guessing, and it made the review structure of the team visible to me

in a way that reading about it would not have.

The strings themselves are harder than they look. Placeholders like %1$s have to

stay intact and in an order that still makes sense in Spanish. HTML tags have to

survive the translation. And there is a locale glossary that defines how common

terms are rendered in es_CR, so consistency with previous translators matters

more than finding the phrasing I personally prefer.

I started with short strings to build volume and get familiar with the glossary,

and I am moving toward longer ones now that I know the conventions.