gtranslator as a modern translation tool for GNOME

gtranslator has been for a long time the standard translation tool for GNOME. However, during the last years its development has suffered a slowdown, due to lack of time of the former core hackers, avoiding the expected evolution of the tool. In that period, motivated by the lack of stability and relevant features, even some GNOME translators have been using tools from other environments to do their work.

During the last months, as the brand new maintainers of gtranslator, we have been working together with a small new group of developers following two paths:

1. We have been preparing the release of the new version of the current branch, 1.1.8, which will solve several critical bugs and increases the overall stability, helping the users still taking advantage of gtranslator to have a reasonable experience while the brand new version is not ready. This new stable version will be released this April.

1. We are implementing new features like an improved message table, a new catalog manager, a profile manager, or the ability to manage translation memories to make life easier for translators. At the same time, we are also cleaning the source code and renewing the use of the GNOME libraries, besides removing memory leaks, creating new icons, homogenizing code style, and doing more bugfixing. The result of all this changes will be the new 2.0 version, currently under heavy development, and expected to be released by September 2008 together with GNOME 2.24.

In this talk, we will explain the work we have done, the tasks in progress, and the plans to convert gtranslator again in a modern translation tool for GNOME. We will do a demo of the new features available, explaining the new code structure and trying to motivat new contributors; we will also discuss the roadmap with the community, taking as much input as possible from the translators.