WordPress Multilingual, Translation and Community

Abha Thakor:
Hello and welcome to another the WordPress way. And for today’s show, we’re all things multilingual and translate WordPress. And we’re actually traveling down to Germany today. Would you like to travel for our shows? And if you’ve not had a visit from us in the last year or two, then drop me a line and I’m Abha Thakor and we’ll gladly come and see what you’re doing about WordPress and WooCommerce in your part of the world. On today’s show, we have guests that you’ve heard before. With me, in fact, just over a year ago, we welcomed Pascal Birchler and Robert Windisch and they joined us again today to talk about some of the things that have happened since, but also how there are plenty of opportunities for you still to get involved in translation. So we’re going to try and counteract some of the misinformation that there is out there about the opportunities. We’re going to address the wonderful comments and suggestions that have come in preparation for this show and I thank you always for those. Please do keep them in. And we’re really grateful for the interaction that we get because we’re really keen to. But this platform continues to be a learning environment that helps people along their WordPress journey as well. Let us go over and meet our guests. So welcome Pascal. Pascal, you’re a software manager at Google and also absolutely key person in the WordPress project. See you in so many different things, from translation to releases to the performance team, to much, much more. So welcome for joining us at the WordPress way today.

Pascal Birchler:
Hey everyone, thanks for having me.

Abha Thakor:
And also in Germany, we’ve got another favorite of the show, which is a person that you won’t be surprised to hear about today, talking about multilingual as well. And it’s a very, very unique Robert Windisch, the CIO of said. So welcome, Robert.

Robert Windisch:
Hi. Thank you for having me.

Abha Thakor:
And we’ve got also breaking news in this show. It’s a place to come, you see, is that Robert is just agreed to be joining the show hosts and presenters and he will be bringing his new show on the WordPress way, all about Multisite. That’s coming very, very soon and we’re going to be talking about it a bit later in the show. So if you’ve got a multi site question and you are following the live feed that we’ve got out today and you have a question that might have a multilingual aspect, please do drop it in. And we have a researcher who’s going to be filtering those questions too. Well, it’s brilliant to see you both here today. And I think one of the things that we found in all the research about translation, about multilingual, about technology changes, there’s some very common threads where people are thinking I’m not really sure what works, why should I get involved what is happening at the moment? And we’re going to try and uncover that story a little bit, thanks to your help. First of all, I’m going to go to Pascal, we’re going to head back in time a little bit back to before 6.5 and the 6.5 WordPress release. Pascal, you’ve created some wonderful plugins for multilingual. One of my favourites is of course is the performant translations one that app that was merged into Core in WordPress in 6.5. What was it like not having that? First of all, to help people understand the importance of this plugin, what difference does that plugin make having that merged into 6.5?

Pascal Birchler:
Oh wow, great question. Yeah, it feels like it’s been a while since it into Core, but basically what we found in our research as part of the WordPress performance team is that websites that were not using or are not using the default English language in WordPress, but like something else like German, they have to load translations. And we found that loading the translations would add some extra overhead to the sites. So the sites were slower and we found that the slowness they could be like about 20% slower, sometimes even more. And with performance translations we tried to find a way to remove this overhead so that translated sites have the same opportunities on the web as non translated sites. Because performance is a big factor when it comes to user experience on web and ultimately even a factor for search engines. So here we were pleased with the result once that got into Core and.

Abha Thakor:
That does mean for people who are not familiar with that term merged into core, that actually that plugin is now available as standard for Everybody who uses WordPress in the latest versions.

Pascal Birchler:
Yes. So for, I would say for the majority of people, they don’t even need to plugin anymore because the functionality is part of WordPress itself. You can still use the plugin because it adds some extra functionality still over what is in WordPress for instance. So part of this new system is a new translation file format. And with the plugin you can convert translation files from, let’s say premium or paid plugins into this new format automatically. But if you just use plugins from the WordPress.org directory, they already use the new format out of the box. So there you don’t need to perform a translations plugin anymore.

Abha Thakor:
That’s a really helpful explanation, Pascal. I think it just helps people who’ve not used it before understand how best to get out of it everything they need. I’m just going to quickly jump back to Robert and then come back to you again about the other plugins you’ve done. Robert, as a user of plugins like performant translations and also because your company does a lot in terms of translations, how do you find the value of having something like this in core and all the work that’s gone into having it there in the first place?

Robert Windisch:
Yeah, so there were so many like I remember like the make post of so many different angles that we could take as core and I think it was you Pascal, like this wrote like a essay on a website with all the different angles that like some agencies tried, some other like everyone was throwing it against the wall and then was like okay, the best way to speed up WordPress would be and speed up WordPress for the non English speakers would be that. So looking at from a core web vitals perspective, like having fast website or having not slow websites is the most important thing we can have. And until that point every WordPress site that was loading a different language than English so needing to have translations had faced some problems. So it was shocking that we like in 20, like over 2020 we were like oh yeah, we could tackle that and because we were before that was like the mo profile that we had in WordPress were like the, yeah, we use the thing that everybody else use on the Internet and then it was like okay, yeah, that’s slow or there is a better way to do this. So it’s really something that like nobody really talks about that like because it like 6.5 came and went and now we have 6.8 like and nobody, nobody bats an eye about like hey performance. And we have this thing now in core and yay. Like it’s just like people don’t notice that and they don’t notice that they could make their website if they’re still using something before 6.4. Like, if you want to have a faster WordPress release and that counts for everything, just go to the current version, like for real, there is a performance team, like, sorry for like going outside of the realm of translations. If you want to have a faster WordPress, go to the current version of WordPress because of the performance team. Thank you Pascal and like Felix and everybody else in the performance team. And Also like the 6.5 that nobody, almost nobody noticed that it WordPress got faster is a bit like, it’s saddening but again like it’s just like people estimate, like think that software should get faster and so it’s something that really derives home the value that WordPress brings to the open web.

Abha Thakor:
Absolutely. And as we all know from working on it as well, is that the performance team is absolutely awesome. If you are new to WordPress or you’ve been told that WordPress is slow and it’s not getting fast, it’s not improving, then I encourage you to go and have a look at any of the WordPress release posts and it’ll set out for you exactly what are the performance updates. Even better, tune into any of the previous shows we’ve done on the release because we regularly have speakers on this show that talk about performance and the changes that have happened and what’s been worked on since. Our last podcast for the WordPress way on the latest release, 6.8 had Joe McGill who shared some really, really fascinating stories about what’s happening in performance, the value that we’ve seen in the last few releases. So there’s plenty of information to correct any misinformation and to be excited about because performance is a major part of, of the WordPress experience. Thank you, Robert, for sharing your views on that. I’m going to head back to Pascal for a moment. Pascal, you’ve obviously been involved in translation and multilingual for such a long time and we covered some of that story last year and anybody who didn’t hear it then and wants to do so, you can click on the link for Pascal Bircher on the podcast page and you’ll be able to see see that and hear the podcast for that too. Pascal, what was it though, that not only kept you going to and your energy to actually see 6.5 adopt this translation plugin, but also keeps you going and keeps you motivated to keep putting your time and energy into translation and multilingual and internationalization as well.

Pascal Birchler:
Oh, wow. It’s. Well, I mean, It’s a. It’s a very broad topic. Right. Because it goes from like one aspect is making WordPress better for translated websites. I also try to help translate WordPress. I even try to help translate WordPress into a language that only 100,000 people speak. I think all of these areas have in common that I want to, I guess, well, democratize publishing, you know, like the WordPress mission itself. Make it easier for everyone to use WordPress and use it in their native language without any drawbacks, like the performance, for instance. And if you’re able to use it in your native language, just makes everything much easier. And so, yeah, I think that’s what’s.

Abha Thakor:
Driving me for you. Obviously you speak a number of languages very fluently. Is there still something special about reading materials? Seeing software actually in German, Switzerland, for which you are the locale manager and the general translation editor.

Pascal Birchler:
Where should I start? So it’s definitely nice to see when translating WordPress yourself or like plugins yourself is one thing, but seeing other people starting to translate their plugins into those locales, those languages, I think that’s the nice part. So when you see like the community getting involved and turning something small into something much, much bigger. So, yeah, say the community, it creates.

Abha Thakor:
That feeling of family, doesn’t it? And that sense of being part of something bigger than ourselves.

Pascal Birchler:
Exactly.

Abha Thakor:
And we’re going to talk a little bit more about that in this show as well, and about how you can be part of that. And you don’t have to be worried that it’s all done already because there’s plenty of place for everybody in this project. Rob, I’m just going to come over to you because you’re also quite heavily involved with translation and you are the locale manager for German. How did you get into that and why do you stay doing that? Because you obviously have a very busy work life, plus all you’re contributing to WordPress. But what makes you think actually I’m going to continue and give time to translations and multilingual.

Robert Windisch:
So I would like to give more time. So let’s start with the. Oh yeah, I’m bad at locality manager. So we have so much like good GTEs and like translators, PTEs like project and translation editors in German that we try to stay afloat. We have so much submissions that is really hard to come through them. And with the upcoming of AI, it didn’t get better to translate things because there’s so much things to review and we have less people. So I encourage everybody in Germany who speaks and can Write German to maybe look into contributing to reviewing translations. Not even translate, please. We need to review stuff. And I built the releases for the German WordPress translation in 2005. So that’s long time ago. And we. Yeah, now it’s could be. I’m two decades in WordPress, so that’s a like 20 years. Sounds weird. Like two decades sounds way better. So I’m two decades in WordPress and I was building update releases for the German translation of WordPress for the German websites we had at that time. And in doing that we needed to have translations up and ready when a new release came. And then if like other people translated, it was good. But we had a release coming up and we were not really sure when it was released because the people that were building core then were in the US and they were like deciding at 11pm German time if they currently feel a release. And you then saw the track tickets, you were like, yeah, we have eight track tickets that could be maybe tomorrow. And then it was like five track tickets and go like, yeah, they can now cheat and like simply move everything to the next version. And then you had to release in this night. So it was really something where we were like, yeah, yeah, yeah, sure. It’s 10pm On a weekday, I need to work tomorrow. Sure, let’s do this. Let’s do a release right now. And so then we simply jumped into motion, did our update release or like our A release package. And that means we need to have the promo files for the German release up and running. And since I was doing that in 2005 when the German community rebooted in 2014, I simply stayed on to like give other people access rights and nobody came around and were like, oh Robert, you need to lose your rights. So then I stayed. So I was grandfathered into to. To do this and, and we have a few people there, active and non active in the, in the release. And again, we need to have more people and we’re looking forward for more people. And it’s not easy because everybody has like a life or something. Like sounds, rhymes with life, like something. I don’t know what its word is. They don’t do WordPress stuff all the time. I don’t get them.

Abha Thakor:
Well, 20 years, hey, I said that’s quite a record.

Robert Windisch:
Two decades, please. Two decades. It sounds way better than 20 years. 20 years sounds like 19 years. 21 years. Two decades have an oomph to it.

Abha Thakor:
And does that mean you’ve been wearing the same hat for 20 years?

Robert Windisch:
I would like to not Comment on that. Like, people know me since, since the ages and I didn’t wear a hat like 2005. It came around later and you had. You have people in the WordPress space who, like, don’t know me without the green and the hat. So I don’t.

Abha Thakor:
But anyway, for anyone just listening to this rather than having the. The image. But you can see it on our podcast page anyway. Robert’s known for having his bright green T shirts and his hats covered in WordPress badges. So if you’re ever at an event, WordPress event, and you see someone dressed like that, go up and say hello. Even better if you speak and can review German fluently, shake his hand and say you will come aboard and review German translations. But if you even do have these language skills, German or others, there are plenty of opportunities. As Robert has highlighted, we are really wanting more volunteers to review materials to help keep pace with the fact that we have so many people who’ve already raised their hand to translate in other locales. You can see where there are needs for translations, even for the latest release. So I think we’re up to about 75%. Pascal will know probably better up to date figures, but we had quite a high level of translation by the time we actually go live on a release. But there’s always so much more. So Pascal, I’m going to take you to that question first of all. So there’s a lot of misunderstanding about that and partly because it’s not that easy to get involved with translation if you completely new to it, lots of new words to get used to as well, that it’s not just the translating of a release software that’s important, it’s also everything that goes on in WordPress. So if someone does downloads the software because it’s in their language, they also may want to then go and download a plugin, a theme, but suddenly find it’s not in their language, so they might feel a bit stuck. How do we get around that? How do we get people to understand that there are things that you can translate just because the release might be done. How can we encourage that? Because we know that’s a sticking point within translation.

Pascal Birchler:
So this actually reminds me of probably very old track tickets where there was a suggestion to have some sort of nudge or Message in the WordPress admin dashboard, like a dashboard widget there to encourage people to translate WordPress and translate plugins, so it would recognize that maybe one of your plugins isn’t translated into the language that you’re using. WordPress in and it’s like, hey, you speak the language, we’re missing translations, why not help? And then I think just maybe one or two years ago there was some work using WordPress Playground to have like some sort of in context translation. So you open WordPress in the browser in Playground, install the plugin there, and you see a text and you can click on a text and translate it right away and then upload those translations to the translation system. So it really lowers the barrier for new beginners or even for existing contributors, make it more easy to translate WordPress. If we can continue working on that, I think that would go a long way.

Robert Windisch:
Already found a ticket. You will not be happy how it’s currently it’s closed. It was closed nine years ago.

Abha Thakor:
So for this podcast I’ll Old habits of a journalist. You know, we did a lot of research and I was really surprised with my colleagues about how many times people said but it’s translated already. We looked, there was nothing to do and it’s like, no, you can’t all be the drunk. But it acting as a disincentive. It’s brilliant that we have so many releases translated so super quick. But as we’ve all said today, it’s only part of the story. And for people whose language skills may be exceptional in their own native language, it can be really hard if they’ve downloaded a software and not realized that everything isn’t already in that translated language. So maybe it’s just a bit of signage as well that we need to do so that it could be that someone downloading today in Zimbabwe, I’ve just picked on a particular place but has downloaded a software. The release might be all there and something that might say, oh okay, this is how you could translate. It’s just finding that way that digital marketing is all built around this idea. AI prompts and getting people to reply to chatbots are built around getting the people to the next step. So it’d be lovely to see if we could find a way to address that. Like I first started helping with WordPress translations, probably going on for 10 years. And it’s a little bit eye opening to find that the questions that people were asking 10 years ago when we did WordPress translation days as well are quite often same questions they’re asking now. So if there’s anything that we can do to lift that barrier, hopefully through shows like this, we can help people as well. That’d be great.

Abha Thakor:
I’m going to take Robert to the next question. First, Robert, apart from the fact that you’ve had two decades in translation of WordPress, you also worked extensively with understanding how multilingual fits into the WordPress space. And there’s quite often an idea that, okay, there’s not a perfect solution today for what you might want in translation, but surely they’re still worth people creating their own workarounds or ways of thinking about translation when they’re creating a product and not just thinking about one language. What would your advice be to product managers now who are thinking about opening new shops using WooCommerce or creating new websites around a product? What would your advice be to them in terms of thinking about multilingual and translation?

Robert Windisch:
Sounds controversial, but do you really need to translate your website? Yes, I know it sounds weird coming from me and coming in the multilingual show, but what I heard over the years was that people were going into translations because they think they need to go into translations, but they didn’t even had their base market ready and up like they were not even like nailing it in their home translation. And then they were like, yeah, let’s do another language which I don’t speak. I have no way of supporting this language and I have no way of like reaching out to those people and maybe even not speaking exactly the right terms. Like for example, if you sell boat stuff and you then need to talk about like special notice things and they could be normal English words and normal like French words or whatever. But it could be that in the notice area or wherever you want to what your niche is, there could be different words and you don’t know them. And again, AI will probably help you along the way. But the first thing that I will always tell people, if they Want to like push something out and like release something to the world. Just make sure that you nail your primary audience. If your audience is English, totally fine. If your audience is a non English language that you speak yourself, try to nail the first part first. And don’t like, just ignore the English, like just ignore everything else in your main language because you need to sell and you need to have your product up and running in this, like this particular thing, like your, your shop in this particular language. And then later you can tackle those things like it is good if you plan ahead that you want to have different languages, but nobody needs a shop in four languages that fails. Like nobody needs like to think about all these different languages, all these different things that you need to. Whenever you do an update, whenever you do something that you need to think about all the other translations and you then do not focus on the main part of your selling stuff to your customers. So that sounds weird, but it might take away from that.

Abha Thakor:
I’ll completely agree with you. I think when we’re talking to clients about making sure that their content fits their purpose first and foremost is super important. And then think about what else you need to do in terms of translating. But also I would say that if you are working on creating a website, do think about your markets. And if your market happens to be a different country that you think is going to be a major part of your purpose, your product aspirations and where your company will be driving your marketing, then do think about it right at the beginning so that you can plan for having the right tools in place. Now. Quite often, Robert and Pascal, as we all know from working in AI and in our day work, people often think, well, it’s a simple solution. I don’t have to do anything, I’ll just stick an AI translation up to. I’ll tell Google to translate everything and use that. Don’t have to check it, don’t have to do anything else. Job done. I’m going to go to Robert first because I know this is a topic very close to your heart. And he’s rubbing his hands with glee. So be prepared.

Robert Windisch:
So I can go first?

Abha Thakor:
You can.

Robert Windisch:
Oh, that’s fine. My answer is agentic commerce. So if you think forward, what AI will do to everyday people’s lives, be part of them. AI will be on the phones of people. And so if you fast forward and just ignore the rubbish that we are in right now with AI and with like what, what they can do, everybody like as has the AI to create more output than everybody else adds their own AI to create less output, to simply like get down to bullet points again and to understand what someone else was saying. Just imagine, like, just ignore the leveling up of everybody in this field. Jump forward a few years. AI will help you discover things or like products that you want to buy, but you have no way of finding them because you are not clicking through all these search results on every search engine. But AI can, if it’s incentivized to simply click through and find the best product or the best shoes in your neighborhood that you can buy right now, it can do this. And so in terms of like translating things, yes, Translations then will be like air quotes, obsolete. Because AI can understand like almost all languages, like some of them better, some of them worse. But if you think about that forward, there will be so much empowerment for everyday people to speak almost all languages simultaneously. Because the agent can go out into the web, can go like, hey, I found the things that you’re looking for. Here are three results of websites and you don’t even need to like, look at them. I have like summaries for you. You just need to say, like, yeah, I want to have the first one. Or like, you probably want the first one. After a few duration, the AI will say like, you probably want the first ones because it matches what you want, it’s close, shipping is good, like it have a good rating and something like that. So I will really be a part of making sure that everybody on their phones have an easy way of like taking part in the world.

Abha Thakor:
And of course, AI is very much with us in so many different levels already. So we already are getting translations on site which actually don’t make any sense in the language that they’re supposed to be translated into. And again, thanks to all the people who contributed messages and the ones who are contributing are live today that it’s a bit worrying if you are just giving up the control to an AI and saying, please translate, we’ll publish it. You’ve no idea if necessarily on the accuracy or that it’s captured the tone. Because internationalization, which is a big part of WordPress as well, is also about making sure what is translated makes sense in the language. It is translated because we all put our grammar in different order depending which language we are speaking. And if you are a native in one language, when you translate something, you might put it in a different order than the language of that country would normally be presented in. There are lots and lots of pitfalls that we need to be aware of, but there are opportunities too. I’m going to take the question to Pascal. Pascal, in terms of internationalization, where do you think we are now in terms of the WordPress space, in terms of how that sits, what its opportunities are for the future?

Pascal Birchler:
Well, I’m a bit biased because there’s like one thing I really want to see in WordPress when it comes to translations, which is merging my preferred languages plugin into WordPress core. So it’s a new feature that started as a plugin, but it was really meant to be integrated into WordPress Core itself, you know, like the performance translations, but because it’s something that affects anyone and it’s basically a simple change to the language drop down in WordPress where you not only select your language, let’s say German, but actually a list of languages in order of preference. You already have such a UI in your browser and your operating system basically everywhere except WordPress. And the idea is that translations are more complex than you might think. And WordPress might not always be available in language X, but it might be available in language yes. And when you have for instance the German translation with like a formal and informal translation, or you have Spanish as in Spain or Spanish as Mexico, you might want to have like, okay, I want the formal translation and if that’s not available, just give me the informal one. And if that’s not available, okay, I’ll use English. So I really want to see that. And the other part is I guess phase four of Gutenberg or WordPress at that point, which is built in multilingual functionality.

Robert Windisch:
Yeah, if you break it down, it’s simple. It’s saddening, but simple. My current estimation is three to four years to get to phase four because in phase three and phase three means collaboration. And if someone currently opens WordPress right now, downloads the current version and looks into the backend, go like, where is collaboration? Right, that’s where we need to work on. So the collaboration currently means that we need to work on the data views, which is a very boring name for. We need to revamp the WordPress interface that it looks like it’s not 2014. So we need to like there’s a like for old people in WordPress there was a thing called MP6 and MP6 was the revamp of the then very old looking interface. So now we need to revamp MP6 and data views is one of the things that really makes sure that WordPress looks how it currently should look like. But we need to work on that. So there needs to. People need to look into data views can see if they can help with that because we need data views to work on collaboration. And if we work on collaboration, in collaboration there are workflows. And workflows are very a crucial feature for phase four because the one thing that like holds up phase four is what if someone changes the English translation of a website, then the Spanish and the Netherlands, the Dutch version of the website will never know there is a translation change. They will never know, like, hey, you need to do something, something changed on the English side. So to have this in core, the translation feature and requirement was set up to that. We need workflows to tell other languages, hey, something needs to change because something in English changed. So with this feature as a requirement for phase four and being part of phase three workflows, that is like a very easy way of seeing, okay, how are we progressing in that? And as soon as people see in their WordPress backend, they can now in real time collaborate with someone and they have workflows, they can almost fear phase four, like stepping into the town and we can almost then have a conversation with phase four. But until then, phase four is currently far off in the future because we are still in phase three of Gutenberg.

Abha Thakor:
So for phase three, somebody wants to get involved. Can we add some links, do you think, to the show notes just to help people find those areas where they can make a difference?

Robert Windisch:
Yes, and with the expectation setting, it’s not an easy jumping in and we’re not waiting for one person showing up going, like, I have five minutes, I can help. It’s really a big chunk of like redesigning the backend interface and like working on data views. So I just want to set the expectation setting for people. It’s a react. It’s the REACT components of Gutenberg that are moving forward. So we are talking about a repository with like 10,000 open issues with everything working there. So it’s not an easy. That’s the one ticket. You go in and then everything is settled. Even for people who know this stuff, it’s not easy to pinpoint what exactly is the ticket we currently need to work on.

Abha Thakor:
But I guess if we don’t move towards it, then phase four is going to be an even longer.

Robert Windisch:
But I just want to set expectations. It’s like, even for us people like we. That’s not easy. Like Pascal, do you know where with the one ticket that people can start.

Abha Thakor:
On, I don’t think it’s a ticket that they can start and I think it’s just signposting the areas they need to be in. How what filter they might want to put into to get that area so they know what they’re looking for. Because that’s the constant issue we have is that to find where it is that you want to contribute and how your particular skill set might make that little bit of difference with working alongside other people. It’s knowing that direction, it’s knowing something about where to find these things.

Robert Windisch:
Yeah. And for Data Views, there’s already content out, there’s already blog posts about that, there’s already designs out there, there’s videos out there. So people that currently heard for the first time what the hell is dataview, they can really look into that. And again like it’s then getting very fast, very developer heavy, but it’s something that is coming for the future and everybody will love the new design. And Data Views is just one of the starting points to get there. And that’s why I can recommend that looking into Data Views and we will have a link to the last blog post on make and in the show notes to make sure that people have a starting point there and like maybe a GitHub link, but we start with a make post because that’s the easiest way to get your head around what currently is done in WordPress to move the interface and like get multilingual, like in the far future into WordPress.

Abha Thakor:
Thanks, Robert. And on the WordPress way, we’re really keen on focusing on making our shows about learning as well, about learning together, about bringing people on the show from all parts of the world who can help you contribute to WordPress, can help WordPress make a big a difference in what you’re doing and to improve your skills, answer your questions. So do get involved with us too and let us know how you’re using it in ways that you’re finding multilingual or translation really works for you if you’re a new translator, if you’ve been translating like Robert for two decades and you have a story to tell us, we’re collecting case studies now as well and we’re going to be using some of those not just here, but also looking about how we can make possible developer Blog content that will help other people. If you want to know more about the Developer Blog and its latest development, some of the opportunities to write for the Developer Blog, then check out the show from April 2025 where we have lots of content about the developer blog and case studies that you can help with. I’m going to hope we have both of these guests today helping us on some of the content for the WordPress developer blog too. So I’m going to just take us now down back to the area of working with people, collaborating with people, not just on the software and translations, but actually in real life at these things that are called Word Camps. So if you haven’t heard of them before, they are a revelation. They will probably change your life. If you’ve never been to one, you want to find out where your local one is or even somewhere you want to visit and find out how to get there. Their ticket prices are kept low and that is to help people be able to get to them and to be part of the experience and the learning and to be part of the sharing. And we also have flagship WordCamp events. And Pascal has another hat. Got so many hats, and yet in the studio today, he’s not wearing a hat. Now, for those that were obviously not on video for the show, but there are a collection of 25 hats on my left as I’m broadcasting this that I normally wave at people we have on the show to say, would this hat suit you or would this hat maybe? And we try to make our show a little bit different. But Pascal has smiled at all the different hats that have come up, so we might do something on social with that a bit later. So, Pascal, you’ve been a very, very busy person as ever, but you’ve also got WordCamp Europe coming up in less than a month, I think now. So tell us a little bit about why having so many people gathered together in across Europe, but wider as well, coming from different parts of the world is so important and why WordCamp Europe is so special to you.

Pascal Birchler:
Well, where should I start? So WordCamp Europe, and I think I’ve been to every single edition of WordCamp Europe so far, has always been very special to me because it brings together a lot of people and a lot of people who make WordPress and people who want to start making WordPress. And it’s just, I don’t know, the atmosphere, I don’t can’t really describe it. It’s you get together, you get things done, you learn a lot of new things, you make new friends, meet old ones. And what I like about the work camps and especially Working Europe, is you have two days of conference, at least for work of your and then one day of Contributor Day. So the conference is like you would expect. You have multiple rooms with presentations and workshops, etc. And contributor day is where people can get involved and start contributing to WordPress, which is really exciting. And this year it’s my first time that I’m not only attending work compute but also organizing. Big reason there is that it happens to be in my home country, Switzerland. And I thought it would be a great opportunity to contribute my expertise, I guess to the event and make sure that it’s a great event and people will have a great impression of Switzerland.

Abha Thakor:
And it’s such an amazing country. I have very fond memories of it, I think. Pascal, I’ve met you both in Switzerland and in Germany in different WordCamps and if you can’t go to WordCamp Europe, you. You can follow along as well with some of the things that are happening. So do check out the WordCamp Europe website and we’ll put the link again in the show notes. We’ve also have an episode that all about WordCamp Europe in a bit more detail talking to the organizers. So we’ll put a link to that show too. And of course, as you would expect, you will see folks from our series of shows at WordCamp Europe. And of course, most importantly, you’ll see BobWP. I think he should just have his name changed by DeepL now to that and there’s going to be a booth there as well with some very exciting news. So do look out for that and we’ll be following that in our social. We’ll also share some of the information that’s happening about the WordCamp Europe this year. If you are going to WordCamp Europe and it is something that you have found has a profound effect on you that you wish that there was something that you could do locally and you are setting up something locally or the other way around that you’ve been so inspired by WordCamp Europe, you’ve done something in your local area that is now flourishing. Do get in touch. We’d love to hear what that is and how we might be able to feature that on the show. And you can contact me at nonstopnewsuk on Twitter or via the do the Woo and the WordPress way links on their podcast too. So it comes to it. We’re winding up today’s show. It’s gone so quickly. So nice to have these gentlemen in our show with us today. Just a final word really, Pascal, for people who have listened to this and think, okay, maybe I’ll give translations a go, maybe something that I can do. What do you want them to take away with them?

Pascal Birchler:
It’s easier than you think. To translate or press into your language can be a very small contribution. You can start with one text that you might want to change, whether it’s like a Big plugin or a small plugin. And actually a contributor day is a great opportunity because there’s usually multiple tables for the translation team. So the Polyglots, as we call them.

Abha Thakor:
Where you can get started, great suggestion. And as a WordCamp Europe has a contributor day, as did many of our WordCamps, so do check those out too. Normally they are different to the main event days where the talks are, but sometimes they are now merged as well. So there’s lots and lots of opportunities as well as you can join the Polyglots channel on Slack and that’s on makewordpress.org and you’ll find all the information. Again, we’ll put proper website addresses on the show notes so you don’t have to write down the exact bits and we’ll just refer to the names on the show. So hopefully you’ll know where to look in detail for these things. Robert, now, is that hat going to WordCamp Europe?

Robert Windisch:
Yes, and I will see almost no.

Abha Thakor:
Talks, so look out for this hat. In fact, I’d love to capture how many sightings there are for this hat. In fact, I might do a poll on it. So look out on WordCamp Europe, so we’ll see how many times this hat is spotted. Robert, you’re going to be joining us soon on this new show as part of the WordPress way. All about multi sites, if anyone has an interest in multisites. And a question we will put into the show notes how they can get in touch with you as well and be part of what we’re doing here on the WordPress way. What is the final message that you want to take us out on in terms of why be a translator?

Robert Windisch:
It’s connections. The easy answer is connections. You enable other people to have a connection with the language that you speak. Like if you translate from English to your local language. So you can help other people who are not that fluent as you are, to understand the software better and to make sure that they can use the software to create something they want to put out into the world.

Abha Thakor:
It’s a fantastic opportunity and if you haven’t done it already, have a look. And if you only speak, in your view, English, there’s various versions of English, so you could also translate that as well. You’ve been listening to Abha Tahkor and the WordPress way, and a big thank you to our guests today, Pascal Birchler and Robert Windisch, and we look forward to hearing more about the progress towards Phase four and also the new developments with the plugins that you’re both involved with as well. So thank you for joining us and do check us out at WordCamp Europe and in our next show we’re recruiting already for various topics across the year. Do let me know if there’s something that we could feature you on. And that remains just for me to say. Have a lovely rest of the month and we’ll catch you later on the summer.