Stories of WordPress Translation, Community and Sustainability

Abha: Welcome to another episode of Do the Woo builder stories. I’m your host for today, Abha Takor and in the studio, we have Maja Loncar who is joining us from Serbia, Vachan Kudmule, who is joining us from Mumbai in India and Simon Kraft, who is joining us today from Germany. So a really lovely, diverse mix that we have in the studio with us. Welcome everybody and thank you for joining us today for this special episode, that is connected to the idea of bringing WooCommerce and WordPress direct to people at their local places and in their own local languages. And if you didn’t know that that could be done, stay tuned, we’re going to have plenty more information about that for you.

Now, first of all, my first question has to go to Vachan. Vachan, as you know, this series is all about the stories of Woo builders and the more unusual the developer story, the more intriguing it is. And we just have to start with you because you didn’t actually start out to be a developer. In fact, building websites wasn’t something even on your plan, the idea originally was to build houses. So tell us a little bit about how you get from working on a course towards architecture to ending up being a WooCommerce enthusiast?

From architecture to WooCommerce

Vachan: So the whole journey was quite unplanned in that manner. So in roughly around my academic years in my high school, I had decided that I want to be an architect. And when I said architect, I mean the physical infrastructure, in a sense physical building architecture, not our digital architecture of infrastructure, but brick and mortar buildings. That is what we designed and I had decided this earlier in my young ages, in my high school that I want to do that. But that’s in roughly when it came around 2001, when the new millennium started, I got intrigued with the internet. And then I started exploring the internet, it kind of took me by craze. And that’s when I started exploring what I can do more with the internet, because I have always been passionate about two things. One is creativity and the other is technology.

And the combination of the two is what has always been my point of interest, which kind of, architecture, which is the designing architecture, the sense of the physical architecture design. That also is a combination of creativity as well as technology. Technology and construction versus the creativity in the design of the buildings or design of these spaces. And while exploring internet, I realize that the webspace is also a combination, because even if it sounds technical, it is incomplete without a creative input. And that’s when I realized that this is also something that is equally interesting for me to kind of explore. And slowly, slowly, along with my academic studies of architecture, I realized that building websites is something that I equally enjoy. And eventually after two decades, I’m 100% focused on only building websites and building web applications. And that’s the whole way I kind of balanced my architecture and building as a developer.

Abha: Thank you for sharing that. But of course there were some benefits of going to architectural school, because you also met your partner there. And of course, if anyone thought, I love this idea of sharing offices. And I hear that Vachan, you share an architecture Come web design and commerce office all in one.

Vachan: Correct. So we have an open plan. So Come having the background of designing and architecture. So our office is actually an open floor plan wherein we kind of have a community table inside our office. So there are no cubicles, it’s purely open. And one side we have a technical team sitting and the other side is a creator like a design team sitting, which is doing architecture design. So in my architecture and academic journey, as Abha said, I met my partner. And so when we started our practice, we started in the same office space. So even if the office space is same, the work that we do is very different. One team does architecture building and the other team does website building, but still yeah, we build things.

Next, botany to web development

Abha: Well, it just shows that creativity comes in all sorts of forms. And thank you Vachan for sharing that story. And if you think that that was the most unusual journey you’ve heard, you’ve got to hear the next one. We now go to Simon. Simon, I hear that development, I don’t even know how you make this jump, but Simon made the jump from Botany. Yes, you heard that right, botany to web development. Simon, you have to fill us in. How did that happen?

Simon: I actually don’t know. I started with WordPress almost 15 years ago and somewhere along the way, I decided to study biology, which seemed to be a logical step to me back in the day. But then I specialized in botany, as you said, and I don’t know. In some places, it actually makes sense to take a look at nature and what nature can do and apply that to development, but that’s very rare. So that was not planned and definitely not a career path I would necessarily recommend.

Abha: Unless of course somebody can make that connection. And you never know, because we will be hearing a little bit more about the environment. So from Simon, and that connection hasn’t been wasted, has it Simon?

Simon: Indeed, yeah.

Discovering WooCommerce through learning about currency

Abha: Now we go to Maja. And Maja, it never ceases to surprise me what you have done in your career and where you travel to. But I was intrigued to find out that discovering WooCommerce was actually through currency. Now, how do you discover WooCommerce through learning about currency?

Maja: Well, hi everyone. I’m so happy to be here today with you and share my experience. Yeah, so basically in 2011, first time I heard about WordPress, and at that time I was working as a part of a holding company where they wanted to unify communications and divisions and subject. And I wasn’t really aware of it, but I know there was a fantastic developer who was telling me this is the future of WordPress. And at that moment, I really did not understand what that meant.

But then again, in 2018, when my brother started an online business called The Shop, he actually was looking for a referral for, “What’s the best way to start?” Like what type of a shop you organize? So basically we were advised to go with WooCommerce. So we went with WooCommerce unknowingly what will happen and now this is the business that we have. This is our own family business. So WooCommerce is empowering my life.

Abha: Which is lovely to hear. And of course you first discovered WordPress through cars, which I always think is a lovely, lovely way to discover it. Can you tell us a little bit more about how WordPress came into your life?

Maja: Well, when it comes to cars, at that moment first since 2011, I was marketing manager for Mitsubishi. And we had to showcase our vehicles in the best possible way online and still in 2011, we didn’t have too many choices, but then this amazing person, Iman, came with his proposal saying, “Let’s try WordPress and let’s try how we can actually check it out with WooCommerce and organize it.” And we were all looking at him and I’m like, “Man. Seriously, is this what we are supposed to do?” So it really opened, I mean at that moment, it was a really creative tool and for our market here is we always try to find tools. So WooCommerce really gave that push at that moment at that level, we needed. So it was awesome, seriously.

The importance of translating WooCommerce as a plugin into your local language

Abha: Thank you Maja, for sharing that. Now I’m going to just jump over to Simon because he looks too comfortable in this podcast. So we know we have to put him on the spot. So now, and I say that with affection, especially as I’ve just had to translate the German blog he did without realizing there was a wonderful English translation, but it’s all good, because it’s all about practicing your skills. So if you’re thinking, what has translation got to do with WordPress and WooCommerce? Well, I think Simon’s just the person to tell us why it’s so important to be translating WooCommerce as a plugin into your local language. Over to you Simon.

Simon: Well, I think with WooCommerce it’s similar to WordPress and the WordPress plugins themselves is people often find their way around English strengths because English is the default in WooCommerce and many other plugins. But especially in cases like eCommerce, it’s very, very important to have that in your local language. So you can understand what you’re doing and find your way around a shop or a website. And luckily with WordPress, we have a big community of volunteers pledging their time to translating enormous numbers of text to their local languages, which is really great.

Abha: Simon. You’ve been involved with meetups as well that are and encouraging people to translate locally if they’ve not tried it before. What made you decide to start actually translating the WooCommerce one? Because that’s quite different from translating core releases or some other particular aspect for the German community. Why is it important for WooCommerce to be available in German too?

Simon: Oh, I think in Germany, especially we are a bit picky with having strange language strings in our websites and WooCommerce shops are no exception to that. And I think I started translating WooCommerce, I don’t know how many years ago, when I actually saw a wrong or misleading translation, something that was maybe translated with some automated software like Google Translate or something, but was not precisely on point in German. And I was like, “Hmm, we can do better than that.” And headed over to a translate side and try to fix it and not break stuff on my way there.

Getting started on translating the WooCommerce plugin

Abha: Thank you Simon. I think that’s the case for a lot of people. And I think if you do see something on WordPress or on the WooCommerce plugin in a translation and you think actually that’s not quite how we would say it in my local language, it’s a great place to start. Especially as this month in September, we are celebrating with the United Nations on the international day of translation, which falls on the 30th of September. And our challenge from Do the Woo to any Woo developers or listeners out there is, “Why not have a go and translate the WooCommerce plugin for this month?” Have a go, get started, there are going to be some events that are also happening as part of a WordPress translation day, which is scheduled for the 28th of September. So have a go. Make it this year that you start. And on that note, I’m going to go over to Vachan, because Vachan’s been a plugin translation editor for WooCommerce for a few years. Vachan, can you just talk people through how they get started? What do they need to do to be able to start translating the WooCommerce plugin?

Vachan: WordPress, part of our team is something which is always who are very interested in kind of helping out the community. So being a project translator, the simplest way to do this is just go on the WordPress official website, which is the translate.wordpress.org. Okay? So once you go there, you’ll get all, the entire set of all your … the core, the teams, the plugins, everything is simply listed out there in the language. So you have to select your language, which you want to translate, okay? Once you select the language, then you can just select which project you want to work on. So you can just search for WooCommerce in that. And once you select WooCommerce, it’ll give you a complete front end system where you can just see what has been translated and what is pending.

So generally there are two primary places where you can help contribute to the translation is one is the stable version, which is actually live and people are using it and then there’s a trunk, which is the future release, the immediate future release. So both are equally important because the current version also helps whoever is already installed and working on that, that also gets updated whenever the user updates their website and the trunk is for the future release.

So whatever translations will happen and when the new release comes out, it will be pre-translated. It will be already in the language that you’ve done the translation in. So working on these both is a very good idea. And it’s about your fluency, about how you feel comfortable picking up any language. If you feel you’re confident enough to take any language, you can explore it. See what words, which phrases are requiring any translation and you can just suggest that translation. And it’s as simple as just filling up that simple clicking on the word, clicking on that phrase and just in inputting your translated reply. That’s it.

Abha: So you don’t need to have necessarily experience of being a WooCommerce developer to translate the WooCommerce plugin, would you say Simon and Vachan?

Vachan: Correct. You just need to understand if you’ve used WooCommerce, it’ll help you because you understand where that phrase is being used. Because in some languages, what happens is a same word could mean differently if it is being used, let’s say in a different context. So just being aware of the context is a good thing, but you don’t have to be an expert in development, you don’t have to be, there’s nothing like any coding language is required. It’s just purely language, you should know the language. And it just is a benefit if the context where that phrase is going to get used in the software, that’s it. But it’s not compassion, because there’s always a reference given in the guide itself.

Challenges of translation

Abha: So really our challenge is not just to WooCommerce developers, but it’s to anybody who wants to have a go at translation and can help with the WooCommerce plugin. Have a go. Take the inspiration of these people and please have a go. I’m just going to go to Maja and then bring Simon in as well because Maja you’ve been raising how sometimes there’s not an equivalent word that can be translated. Can you tell us a little bit more about how that works with WooCommerce?

Maja: Well, not only with WooCommerce, I mean with all the plug-ins there we can actually contribute to, are figuring out specifically about WooCommerce. For instance, where we translate a certain term like tab or field or something, we translate to a new deposit, this word in the glossary. But then nothing further than the glossary. Because then for instance, let’s say if the tap is being translated into my language, like a short tongue, let’s call it like this. If you go and Google short tongue, I mean you will not find anything actually that explains how to solve your problem. So it would be great if we can decide glossary, if there would be a visual supporting articles explaining or I don’t know, making the glossary a bit more.

Abha: So I think one of the phrases that we had in researching for this episode today was people said that words like carousel, there was no equivalent word in lots of languages. Simon, have you found this as well? When you’re translating into German?

Simon: There are cases where stuff like that happens. But I think in German, it’s not so bad because German and English are quite close to a certain degree. So in many cases we have words. Our main issue with German is that our German words are very long in many cases. Because in German it’s grammatically sane to just chain words and have like donaudampfschifffahrtsgesellschaftsmützenfabrikant. That’s a valid word. And so in many, many cases, it’s actually an issue to find a translation that fits the context. So for example, you have a button somewhere and the button cannot be huge. So you have to find a fitting word still meeting the context. So that’s hard sometimes.

Abha: So Simon, are you going to tell us what that German word actually means?

Simon: It’s about a hat for a sea captain.

Abha: Okay. So I knew you’d get the word hat in somewhere, but I think it is about translating for sense. And everybody who’s on the show today has been involved in previous WordPress translation days, they have helped mentor new translators. And I think sometimes it can be hard if you think you’ve just got to translate word for word. You also need to make sure that the translation makes sense. It makes sense in your own language, it doesn’t create a very complicated instruction that therefore they would not understand because the grammar in the original is very different to the way you are translating it. So I think also the sense of translation is there’s a difference between that and localization. So Simon, would you want to just expand a little to help our listeners understand how localizing content and particularly for eCommerce can actually be really valuable?

Simon: Oh, the first example that came to my head was another one. For the eCommerce sense, I would say translating stuff with the localizing stuff with a fitting currency, for example would make sense. If we have in WooCommerce, which is America-focused let’s say in many cases, we have examples in U.S. Dollars and stuff like that, which is perfectly fine. But if we translated for the German or European market, then we would replace those examples with Euros or Pound or whatever.

Thanks to our Pod Friends Yoast and GoDaddy Pro

Software preferences in your native language

Abha: If you read things in your own language, in your own native language, does that encourage you then to use that software?

Maja: I mean, if we talk about Apple, no. Regardless of how much I feel, I speak better and I understand better in my own language. I mean, something that I’ve learned, which was settings and like just setting up an Apple phone in my own language, I wouldn’t be able to understand the single function, all right? But when it comes to understanding all sort of new tools are known, I’m sure I would prefer some of it in my own language.

Abha: Do you think the speed of which we learn something and we understand it and therefore can use it to expand our businesses is greater if we feel that it’s a language that we have more proficiency in?

Maja: I mean, yeah. You speak several languages here. So sometimes even when you’re really tired, you still think and you’re still able to think in your native language and this is where you find concept without any stress. I think that I understand information better with my own language. If I’m learning it from Googleing, I don’t know about Simon or Vachan.

Simon: It simply reduces cognitive load, I think, is the phrase for that. It’s way easier, you don’t have to fight an uphill battle to pass and get the information.

Abha: That’s a really good point. And Vachan, I can see you wanting to come in there.

Vachan: Yeah. So the thing is, it also makes a difference because let’s say we take the example of India, specifically one country. We have multiple languages. We don’t have one specific language which represents the mass of the country, but we have multiple local languages. Within India, there are regions which have different dialects, we have different languages altogether. For example, I personally know four or five languages, although I’m pretty only for one, but I know multiple languages within India. So when the content like a software, if it’s available in a local language, it just is more, like the users can associate easily.

And especially if it is in your own language, what happens is you can explore the product more. There would be a limitation. And especially if English is not your first language, which is a case in many of the countries, English is not the first language. So having a translator or localized version of the software will enhance the user’s experience to even work on the software. So maybe they will create more, there’ll be more productivity. Plus if there was any hesitance in, like let’s say taking the example of WooCommerce eShop. So instead of someone trying to go and find an implement or a creator or a commission, any project, they would try to explore and do it themselves because it would be in their native or local language. So that would enhance the whole experience in building your own and managing your own software.

Abha: It’s a really great incentive and I think anyone who’s listening to this who thinks actually I would love to have this available in my own language. I think it would increase the amount of people using WooCommerce and WordPress locally. Just play back this podcast, convince your local meetup, let’s start translating. Particularly WooCommerce. Let’s make that available to other countries, other cultures, and really do that bit of democratizing the internet and eCommerce.

The restart of the Germany WooCommerce meetup

Thank you for everyone for those thoughts. I’m going to now just move us on to looking at the WooCommerce meetups and how they’ve played a role in all of your three journeys. Simon, I’m going to come to you first. Because not only were you organizing the first ever WooCommerce meetup in Germany back in 2017, but this week you are co-organizing a very new WooCommerce meetup. So tell us a little bit more and let us send a full congratulations to the local community there that are going to be launching this new WooCommerce meetup.

Simon: Thank you. Yeah. I started back in, I think it was 2016 actually, the first meetup in Frankfurt back in the day. I moved away from Frankfurt, so that was short lived, unfortunately. But now we try to breathe some new life into the German WooCommerce community, because I think that’s the case all over the world that COVID really hit the community, especially meetups quite hard. And I don’t even know when the last in-person meetup in-person WooCommerce meet up in Germany met. So we try to reignite the torch here and start with our very first WooCommerce meetup councilor, which to a certain degree with respect to the COVID situation will be a hybrid meetup.

So we’ll have an in-person component, we’ll have people in the building and will interact with each other within the same room. I know it’s a crazy concept. But we’ll also have a live stream of the talk and of discussion afterwards. So we try to bring the greater German community into that and try to make some connections. What we also try to do is have two talks per meetup. One will be a more basic thing with a series of talks, starting with how to install WooCommerce till we have a proper shop for people to get started. And the second one will be a bit more advanced. Showing projects, discussing advanced plugins or solutions for certain problems. So I’m really excited to get that off the ground.

Abha: No, it’s brilliant when we hear about new WooCommerce meetups and if you’re listening to this and you’ve just started a WooCommerce meetup, particularly outside the U.S., and then let us know, because we want to hear about the Woo builders stories and how you are setting up WooCommerce meetups and helping other people. I’m sure at Simon’s meetup, there will be talk of translating WooCommerce plugin as well. And you’ll be glad to know Simon that I’ve been talking to Vachan who … one of the languages that he has been learning is actually German. So I have challenged him to relearn his German and come and listen to one of the WooCommerce German meet ups. So don’t be surprised if you have a follower from India at one of the future events.

Simon: We’ll book him for a talk in February or something. So he has a bit of time to get up to speed.

Abha: And Vachan if you want some encouragement to get Simon to learn one of your various languages, I’ve got to mention these because these are amazing. He has professional working languages, English, Hindi, Canada, Marathi, and a limited working proficiency he says in Gujarati as well as elementary in German. So say Vachan, if we ever needed an advocate for learning languages, I think we’ve got it with you. So we can challenge Simon to maybe pick one of those other languages and learn a few phrases from you too. And maybe he can come and talk to your WooCommerce meet up as well, because it’s all about that idea of exchanging information, which brings me neatly onto Maja. So every year when we have WordPress translation day, the person that you see coming up everywhere and encouraging people in all different parts of Europe and Asia is Maja.

What makes translating WordPress and WooCommerce so special

I think I’ve seen her as one of the organizers for the Translation Day in previous years. I’ve seen her pop up in the slack channels in different countries. And I sat there trying to desperately hang on to following the Italian or the Spanish and Maja swoops in, shares everything and goes on to the next one. It’s like, “I wish I could do that.” But it is important, isn’t it Maja? To be able to communicate with people where they are and in their languages as much as possible. What drives you to share the lovely different languages that WordPress is available in and to promote the translation of WordPress and WooCommerce? Why is that so special to you and why does it give you so much energy?

Maja: Well, I think it’s just this, when you understand all business or an industry, and when you find this ethical base that it’s based on and open source and community being there for each other I mean … and then you see that you can do such a small thing and this could actually change someone’s life, it could do miracles. I mean, it cannot do miracles, but at some certain point it would really make it would really be useful to someone who’s starting or who was looking for the same information. Because I remember for instance, there was an issue with WooCommerce, with currencies, where we couldn’t have our currency in cyrillic letters, but it was only English, in English letters. So we had to find somebody to write the script to check that and improve it for our own things. So something like that.

And then I understood how that just this small thing could’ve helped my brother, like a month. It saves him time of waiting on this and trying to address it with the local language requirements and stuff like that. So I mean, when you see that, so then I understood that I could give my contribution and then I started to contribute as well, when I have time to contribute to translating WooCommerce. I cannot translate every string, I don’t understand everything as my chance that you need to have some context around when you’re translating things and then we have cases as well. So it’s a grammatical thing as well. So I cannot translate each string, but each string I can translate outside better. So this is how I think I’m going to change someone’s life for the better thing, right?

Abha: It’s a lovely description, Maja. And I know one of the things that you’re very good at is if you don’t know something, you’ll know somebody who can, and that’s the joy of the WordPress and the WooCommerce communities. But of course the joy of WordPress in WooCommerce is that you get to learn about all sorts of things. And as Maja said, you get to improve the life of other people and our world. Which brings me very nicely onto Simon who’s now laughing, because he knows I’m going to come to him next.

Sustainability and WooCommerce websites

So Simon, one of the things that you and I have collaborated on for quite a few years now is about sustainability. And sustainability applies to WooCommerce websites as well. Can you just share a little bit about how and what people should be thinking about when they’re setting up a WooCommerce store and in terms of environmental sustainability?

Simon: That’s very difficult to answer in a concise way. So I’ll do my best.

Abha: But it’s okay. We’re going to get you back to do more on it, but just give people a taste just for now.

Simon: On the one hand, there’s the basic stuff that you should look at with any website, which is have it as lean and efficient as possible. Don’t load too many assets that have to take up bandwidth and computing power and in the end energy. So that’s the basics. I’ll skip those because that’s boring. If you take a look at WooCommerce or eCommerce in specific, then let’s say you sell physical products and you have to ship them. Shipping would be the first thing coming to my mind with regards to, is that something you can, let’s say pick a more sustainable option for? If you have short distance shipping, does it maybe make sense to use a bike courier service?

My local bookshop, for example, has someone driving around on a bicycle every day, handing out books to local people or find a way of transportation that’s more eco-friendly because it maybe uses e-vehicles or something in that regard. Also, if you think more to the content site then maybe optimizing product descriptions in a way that you cut on refunds and sending stuff back to the seller makes a lot of sense and cuts emissions and also costs for you as the owner of the shop. So there’s like, as I said, it’s hard to get that in a short answer, but there’s lots of things to do.

Abha: There’s lots to do. And I know Simon, we’ve talked about doing a little bit of a resource list that we can have on Do the Woo to help WooCommerce builders and devs think about their sustainability. So do check in on Do the Woo website because we will be bringing that to you as well. But also one of the reasons that we highlight sustainability in today’s podcast is, and linking it with Translation Day, is because it’s not necessarily the same access to bandwidth in different countries. And as Simon said, if you can reduce the amount of bandwidth, the number of clicks, the number of downloads that a page has to have in your WooCommerce store, it not only helps you reach other markets and different countries that may have data restrictions, that may have short speeds, that may have all sorts of access issues, but it also helps protect the environment and reduce the cost of your shop on the environment.

So that’s one of the reasons why we wanted to bring it in today and there will definitely be more on that because we’ve got some other developers who are going to join us later in the year to share their story, who also are a bit of eco-warriors. So we’ll have Simon back for that episode where we’ll talk a bit more about that. It has been absolutely lovely talking to you all and anybody who’s thinking, “Hey, why don’t we have eCommerce WordCamps?” Simon and I were talking about that in preparation for this event today. And we then noticed on the WordCamp list, there is WordCamp for eCommerce in Madrid coming up. So maybe Simon, do you think this could be a start of future eCommerce focused WordCamps?

Simon: I think that would be an interesting approach to the idea because if you take a look at the broader WordPress ecosystem, meetups are some kind of the root of the local communities and WordCamps are the next layer on top of that and where you can find new people to talk to, to network with, to work with at meetups WordCamps are a great, great way to access way more information, meet way more people. And having that for WooCommerce in specific would be a very interesting idea. I’d love that.

Abha: Well, we shall see what happens with that. We’ll be following the development very closely from Do the Woo. And if you’re involved with this and if you have a Woo builder story that is related, then you know what to do. You need to reply to our call outs for people and find out how you can get involved, because we always want to hear interesting Woo stories. We know that Vachan, you are part of the WordCamp Asia team, and we are going to be very excited about hearing about how WordCamp Asia develops and what happens in terms of the World of Woo. So I hope you will let us know what is happening and we can keep a close eye on developments for that. So good luck with that. Do you want to give a call out for the dates for WordCamp Asia?

Vachan: So the WordCamp Asia is happening in Bangkok. It’s happening in the month of February from 17 to the 19th in 2023. And the registrations are right now, we’ve released two batches. A third batch may be released in early October, which will be the last chance to kind of get the WordCamp share tickets because it’s the regional WordCamp it’s been waiting from a long time to come out, people are eager. So whenever the release date is mentioned, it’ll be mentioned on all the social channels. Stay tuned for that.

Abha: Thank you, Vachan. And anybody who wonders how I get all these WordCamps that he’s been involved with mixed up, I have a whole page here of if it’s happened in India or Asia, then Vachan has been involved. So looking through this, see? Take his inspiration. If you have never been involved with WordPress and WooCommerce, follow the example of these wonderful panelists that we have today and take that first step.

Say we’ve got so much, that’s coming up. We have International Translation Day on the 30th of September. It’s the same every year, so even if you’re listening to this in future years, get translating. Let’s get WooCommerce available in so many different languages. And of course, if you are translating, then we want to know about it. So let us know on the Do the Woo social. Send us a picture, tell us what you’re translating, tell us how much you enjoy using WooCommerce and more importantly, stay tuned and keep your favorite podcast as Do the Woo. Thank you everybody. You can find out more about our lovely panelists on the webpage and we look forward to hearing more stories next month.