Translating CC Deeds

The license engine, deeds and legal code hosted at creativecommons.org are all translated directly by CC jurisdiction partner institutions. While there are usually people at the partner institutions who handle these translations, you can request to become a member of the translation team for any given language using the directions below under For Translators.

Creative Commons uses Transifex to manage translations for the web site and our open source software projects. Information on translating using gettext and poEdit is also available.

For CC Project Leads

To set up translations for your jurisdiction's language(s), please:

1. Select one or more people to manage your translations
2. Each translator should create an account as described below

For Translators

To translate to the language that interests you, please:

1. Go to Transifex.com and create an account. Once you have validated your email address, log in.
2. Go to the Translation Teams tab for the Creative Commons project.
   • If a team already exists for the language that interests you, then click on that language and then click the "Join this team" button, which will allow you to send a message to the coordinator for that language asking then to allow you to become a member of that team.
   • If a team doesn't yet exist for the language that interests you then simply click the "Request a new team" button at the bottom of the list of available teams. This will send an email to the administrator for the Creative Commons project requesting the new team.

General Notes About Translating

How to handle ${} or %() in strings

When you see "${license_name}" or "%(license_name)s" in a string, that indicates a substitution (for the real license name). These are placeholders that the translation machinery uses; if you modify this placeholder, the real license name will never be substituted into your string.

As a result, DO NOT:

• Translate the text ("license_name") into your own language
• Remove the text
• Reverse the order of characters because you have a right-to-left language (ie, "{license_name}$")
• If the text uses the %(), do not remove the trailing character after the close of the parenthesis (i.e. the 's' in "%(license_name)s")

HTML links in strings (i.e., <a href="[someurl]">[sometext]</a>)

When you encounter an HTML link in a string, you must not translate anything inside of the angle brackets. In the example above, you would only translate [sometext], and the rest must be carried into the translation without any changes.

Whitespace Characters

Sometimes you'll see \t or \n in strings. These are left-over from the source files and can be safely omitted.

Wiki Links

Some text contains links to the CC Wiki for more information (ie, issues surrounding fair use, public domain, etc). If you would like to translate those pages in the CC Wiki, you may do so and substitute the link to the translated page in the translation. See CCWiki:Translate for instructions on translating wiki pages.

When Does The Server Get Updated?

legal.creativecommons.org is updated with the newest translations every hour. You need a username and a password to access this section.

The live site however is updated manually. Updates get pushed periodically with other software updates. If you would like to have your translations updated at any time, email webmaster AT creativecommons DOT org.