COOLFest: Collabora Online Is Now Almost Fully Translated into German

A month of open community work

From September 5 to October 4, Collabora ran COOLFest. It was a month for people who wanted to help with the Collabora Online office suite. They could help with code, translations, or design. The developers held open video calls every day, including weekends. Anyone could join without signing up. They got help setting up their development environment, picking tasks, and asking questions about code or reviewing patches.

Key numbers

• 2,733 new translations were added on Weblate during the event, up from 2,095 in the 30 days before it. That is about 30 percent more.
• The German main interface went from about 88 percent translated to 98.9 percent.
• Indonesian and Norwegian Nynorsk reached 100 percent on the main interface during COOLFest. Seven languages are now at 100 percent in total. Simplified Chinese is at 99.9 percent.
• 52 language-and-component pairs reached full translation, up from 37. One language can count for several components, so this is not 52 fully translated languages.
• Components reaching full translation rose from 16 to 16... (see note: the report says the earlier figure was 16 for components)

Who helped and how

Collabora highlighted a few contributors. A new contributor, TDSxJONEY, worked on a performance task in Writer with a mentor's help. The patch was accepted the next day. A returning contributor, Ketan Ghori, sent 17 changes, and 10 were accepted. He replaced jQuery selectors with native DOM calls in the browser front end. The team also prepared 22 new "Easy Hacks". These are small beginner tasks that point to the right code and usually name a mentor. Collabora also updated build guides for Linux, Windows, and macOS, and added a video guide. The video shows the steps from cloning the code repository to running the server. These resources stay online after the event.

Why it matters

Translation and new contributors keep open-source software useful and easy to reach. A nearly complete German interface helps German speakers use the software in their own language. Easy-to-follow guides and mentors also make it simpler for newcomers to start helping.