Page Text: Localization Blog
Translating the Database Guidelines
The Discogs Database Submission Guidelines are the backbone of Discogs; the product of almost 20 years of community-driven discussion about the best way to catalog all the music in the world. In order to truly support that global goal, the Database Guidelines need to be more accessible to music-lovers around the world.
The Database Guidelines have always been a community built project, and we are now looking to our community to help translate this knowledge. If you are interested, please follow these three steps:
Sign up for a free Transifex account . (If possible, use your Discogs username as your Transifex username).
Activate your account via the email link Transifex sends
Complete your Transifex registration by providing further details: As “Role” select translator and choose “I want to join an existing project”.
From the Database Guidelines & Help Center project in Transifex, click the “Help Discogs translate content” button.
Join the Discogs-i18n Translator Team Group and share your Transifex username with us .
Once you have completed these three steps, then your registration is complete! You will receive an email from Transifex when your request is approved by Discogs staff. (Approval may take up to 2 business days. If you haven’t heard from us, be sure you have shared your Transifex username with us in this Group thread . )
Once I’ve joined, how do I add translations?
If you need more feedback, add a comment to the appropriate thread in the Discogs-i18n Translator Group , so other translators can offer guidance.
Why are there so many resources?
To keep translations in sync, we need to have all of our Discogs help documents in the same Project as our Database Guidelines. That’s why the Project is called Database Guidelines & Help Center.
I know, it’s a little overwhelming! We’ve flagged all of the Database related documents as “High” priority, so if you sort by Priority (Descending) you’ll see all the Database related documents first.
You can also search by Database Guidelines which will show all sections of the Database Guidelines (but may exclude a few of the general database-related help documents).
Handling Discogs “Placeholder” Phrases
There are some phrases within the Database Guidelines that need to be preserved in English. This is because certain phrases act as categories or filters. For example: “Not On Label” or “Unknown Artist” are both phrases that can’t be translated without adding a new Label or Artist to the Discography. Most strings that include such phrases should include String Instructions that identify that phrase as a placeholder. Read more about Placeholders .
Improving Completed Resources
You may notice that certain documents need improvements or simply a certain term needs to be changed so we are using the term consistently across all of Discogs. Once a document is completely translated, a Discogs staff member will need to sync the document again in order to update the document displayed on support.discogs.com.
Discogs Staff will plan to sync all documents monthly so we pull in these small changes. But if you want the change to display ASAP, just post a message explaining which documents were updated in the Database Guidelines – Translator Discussion thread , and we’ll be sure to sync immediately.
Questions?
Just ask! The Database Guidelines – Translator Questions thread is a good place to start if you have general questions about Transifex or translating the Database Guidelines. If you have questions specifically for other translators fluent in your language, you might want to start in the “flagged” thread specific to your language in the Discogs-i18n Translator Group: