Translations: a call to action!

Hi everyone,

Now that the dust has settled after the 4.1 release, we look forward to sharing our plans for 4.2 and beyond. But first, we thought we'd give a quick reminder about the ways you can get involved. In particular, translations.

Translations

We’d really love to get MuseScore’s UI translated into as many languages as possible. If your first language is not English, please consider helping translate MuseScore into your native tongue.

Our Transifex dashboard currently shows 16 languages are fully translated, but there are 11 more that are over 80% translated, including Japanese, Spanish, and Hebrew, so why not give us a hand to get these over the line?

There’s also the option to assist with one of the 42 languages that haven’t yet reached the 80% mark, or you can ask to be put in charge of a new language for which we don’t yet have any translations.

If you’d like to help, head over to our Transifex portal and click “Join this project”. You’ll be asked to create an account with Transifex (or link an existing GitHub, Google, LinkedIn or Facebook account) and then you can ask to join one of the translation teams. Please see this Wiki page for further details, and ask in the Discord server or Translation forum if you need help.

Going forward, we will only include languages in MuseScore that reach a certain translation threshold, say 90% translated (exact percentage TBC). The threshold only applies to the UI strings (that’s the “MuseScore” resource on Transifex). We know that many parts of the world use instrument names in English, German or Italian, so it’s not mandatory to translate the “Instruments” resource into every language. Please do translate the instruments if you can, but the priority is the UI.

Community projects

For the developers or would-be developers among you, don’t forget to check out the Community Projects board, where you can find a list of tasks that we’re looking for your help with. Our team is ready to assist anybody who would like to take on any of these tasks.

Testing and bug reports

If you don't feel up to writing code, you can still get in on the GitHub action (pun intended) by helping to test pull requests (PRs) and reproduce issues. Please only comment on issues and PRs with relevant information that’s specific to the task at hand. And keep comments short—we don’t need essays! Use the <details> tag to hide supplementary information, like build logs, etc.

Documentation

MuseScore 4 has a new UI, and we have a new Handbook to go with it. If there’s an aspect of the program that you struggled with at first, or that keeps coming up in questions on the forums, perhaps now is the time to put the solution in writing (screenshots are also welcome!). Make sure you follow the guidelines for editing the handbook. You can also help translate the handbook; ask in the Discord Server or Translation forum to get the necessary permissions for your language.

User support

Last but not least, if you’re reading this then you probably know all about the forums, but the help you provide there is incredibly important, particularly to new users who may not be familiar with the terminology required to get useful answers by searching. Knowledge shared this way will be greatly appreciated by us as well as by the users you assist. It truly is a massive boon to MuseScore that we have such a vibrant community always willing to lend a hand to people who need support.