Upcoming changes to our translations policies

Since we started offering Metabase in different languages over a year ago, translated by the open source community, we have been blown away by the amount of involvement we have seen. Our translation project on POEditor currently has more than 500 contributors(!), and there are 18 languages besides English that have been at least 90% translated. So, before we say anything else, we want to make sure we say “thank you.”

One thing we’ve struggled with along the way, though, has been making our policies about language inclusion and upkeep consistent and clear. Sometimes languages that had been added to Metabase would start to drift away somewhat considerably from the 100% translation mark but wouldn’t be removed, while others would get quite close to 100% but not get included.

Additionally, one of Metabase’s primary tenets is that the product should always provide the absolute best user experience possible, and the core team began to discuss whether it’s truly a good experience to continue to allow users to experience translations that are not complete, resulting in a mishmash of their language and English. Should Metabase really have a “make things look bad” option? Making things worse, the parts of the product that often remain untranslated tend to be the new, marquee features in Metabase, increasing the likelihood of users encountering these less-than-ideal experiences.

So after much discussion and thought, we’re clarifying our policy for what it takes for a translation to be added to Metabase and to remain available in Metabase in subsequent releases:

• Any new translation must reach 100% to be added to Metabase, and can be added in the next major or minor version.
• All existing translations in Metabase must stay at 100% to continue being included in the next major version of Metabase.

We understand that this is a high bar, so we are holding ourselves to the following new process:

• Before each major release, any additions or changes to text in the product will be completed 10 calendar days before the release ships, at which point we will notify all translators of the deadline to complete translations.

Our intent with these changes is to make it crystal clear what the bar is for a language to be included, and to give Metabase users the best possible experience. We hope that these new changes underscore our commitment to both clarity and great UX, while continuing to help make Metabase accessible to as many people around the world as possible.

To give the community sufficient advance notice, these policy changes will not go into effect for the upcoming version 0.34, scheduled for early December. Instead, they will go into effect starting with version 0.35.

If you’d like to help translate Metabase to your language, or to help maintain a translation, you can join our POEditor project.

Thanks once again for all you do to help make Metabase what it is.

— The Metabase Team