This post was published in July 2015, and describes how to join the translation work on Transifex, which the project had only just moved to from Launchpad. Odoo's translation platform has since moved to Weblate, in August 2025, so this procedure can no longer be followed as it stands. See Odoo's translation platform has moved from Transifex to Weblate for where things stand now and how to take part.
Odoo is an open-source package, so anyone in the world can take its translation forward.
Odoo's translation platform moved to Transifex in May this year, following the move of the source code repository from LaunchPad to GitHub.
The official information is here: https://github.com/odoo/odoo/wiki/Translations
Transifex's greatest strength is that anyone can translate easily, on the web, with no developer skills at all.
Start Odoo on Windows, for instance, and the database creation screen appears first — and that page has not been translated into Japanese yet.
Let us walk through translating that page with Transifex.
To translate, you first need to create an account on Transifex itself.
Enter a user name and an email address, and once you have verified it you are asked for your role; choose 「翻訳者/Translator」.
Logged in, go to the Odoo 8.0 project page and you will see the state of translation for each language as a percentage. (Thanks to those who went before, Japanese is at 58%.)
Join the Japanese translation team from 「チームに参加/Join team」, then start translating from 「翻訳/Translate」.
First, select the language.
Next, for the resource to translate, select 「すべてのリソース/All resources」.
Work through it by searching for the string you want to translate.
Let us take one of the sentences on that database creation screen.
Choose 「Text」 in the search box and paste the sentence in.
The string to be translated appears on the left of the screen.
Select it, and enter the translation on the right.
Save, and the translation is done.
Simple enough.
A string translated as a Translator is checked by a Reviewer and, we are told, reaches the GitHub source in about a week.
Transifex makes translating Odoo straightforward, then.
There are 8,888 strings still untranslated in Japanese…
(I arrived only a week ago and am a complete beginner, but I am pressing on with it. I will report back.)
Why not use Transifex yourself and join the Odoo Japanese translation team?
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Why not join the Odoo Japanese translation team on Transifex?