One of the most common questions asked of Disqus around the world is one I asked myself soon after joining: when will Disqus be available in my language? I answered that question for my own native Turkish by diving into the code and adding that language myself. But not everyone works at Disqus(but you can!) and our previous work at supporting languages could not sufficiently scale to support the global demand for Disqus. So today, we’re announcing the Disqus Translation Community: the tools and support for you to bring Disqus to your country in your language.
When we first launched translations support it was quickly deemed a success. The community was translating on a massive scale. Not long after we hit 54 languages we discovered we couldn’t support much more without making changes. So our main goal was to move to a new system that would scale better and put the community in the driver’s seat, to be able to set their own pace. We decided on the popular translation system Transifex.
To get started, go get yourself a Transifex account if you don’t have one already and then move onto Disqus’s page to start working on your language. If you don’t see yours in the list, feel free to click on the “Request a language” button to well, request a language. And if you are really passionate about this, drop us a line at translations@disqus.com or directly from Transifex to become a Disqus Translations Reviewer.
This is a very big step for Disqus since it allows us to be more responsive and appealing to those who don’t speak English. It also helps us keep all these languages up to date and top notch with the help of our awesome community. We are actually seeing the awesomeness happen again. The graph below was produced just by those people who got interested in translating Disqus, without any explicit call, in a week or two:
And finally, because the Internet is home to many invented languages, you can even translate Disqus into LOLcat, pirate and Klingon. This is both fun and real (thanks to Transifex.)
So if you don’t see your language in the list of already available ones, or if you are not happy with the existing translations, come translate with us to make Disqus better!