Data, daten, データ, дані, 数据 …

Data is a universal language. Column headers, notational conventions, and units may vary from place to place, but the information at the heart of a spreadsheet or database can often be understood the world over. But when it comes to working with that data, tools like Grist can pose a language barrier to those unfamiliar with the product’s native language.

Typically, localizing and translating software requires time, technical infrastructure, and fluent or native speakers of any language into which the program is being translated. Even then, software companies have to select specific regions and languages to pursue based on user needs and their resources.

Work on translating Grist began in the fall of 2022. By then, ANCT (l’Agence nationale de la cohésion des territoires), a French government agency, had already deployed Grist on their servers to pilot a project. In order to recommend Grist more broadly across the nation’s French-speaking civil service, they needed Grist’s UI to also be in French. ANCT was willing to translate Grist themselves, but the product lacked support for alternate languages.

Our team saw an opportunity to build translation infrastructure that would make it possible for contributors to translate Grist into any language, in line with Grist’s open source ethos. With support from ANCT to make the project a roadmap priority, the translation infrastructure within Grist was built out by the end of the year.

Then, a call for volunteer translators was extended to our community and they answered right away, quickly embarking on their own translations to make Grist accessible to hundreds of millions of non-English speakers around the globe.

A Weblate dashboard shows the completion status of every translation of Grist

With the initial technical work of Grist’s developers and the ongoing help of dedicated volunteer translators from our community, Grist is now fully or partially translated into more than 20 languages. Take a look behind the scenes – and around the world – to see how it’s happened.

Supporting open source community-driven translations with Weblate

Translating Grist became the first major project of ANCT and Grist’s partnership. In keeping with Grist’s open source mission, the joint teams sought to build their translation on a framework that could be used to eventually translate Grist into additional languages, and to allow community contributors to provide those translations. The teams settled on using Weblate, an open source tool for translating in-product text strings.

Weblate’s ability to support multiple translations of Grist ensured that the work behind ANCT’s initial localization would ultimately benefit the entire community of Grist users, not just those in the French administration. Users and community members with language skills and free time were empowered to contribute their own translations and localizations, democratizing access to Grist for billions around the globe.

January 2023 – First translations take flight | 🇫🇷🇩🇪🇪🇸🇵🇹

The new translation infrastructure quickly caught the attention of Paul Janzen, a multilingual Grist user. As the ANCT team worked on their French translation, Paul began working on three additional translations – Spanish, Portuguese, and German.

Thanks to the diligent (and lightning fast) work of Paul and the ANCT team, Grist was fully translated into four non-English languages around the beginning of January 2023.

The Grist team supported the community-powered translations by building out new UI elements to allow users to easily switch Grist to their preferred language. Grist’s new multilingual capabilities led the January 2023 newsletter, paving the way for more members of our global community to begin working on their own translations.

March 2023 – Community-driven translations go global | 🇨🇳🇮🇹🇳🇴🇵🇱🇷🇺🇺🇦

Within a few days of the newsletter announcement, members of the Grist community began working on three more translations – Russian, Ukrainian, and Polish. A Community post from Grist CTO Paul Fitzgerald a few days later spurred the addition of two more translations – Italian and Simplified Chinese, each of which were fully completed in a matter of days.

Grist CTO Paul Fitzpatrick connects with volunteer translators on Grist’s Community forum

Members of Grist’s community joined in on Paul’s thread volunteering to take on new translations, debating the correct translations of technical database terms, and discussing technical challenges that some languages – such as left-to-right languages like Arabic and Persian – could pose.

Within a few weeks, Grist’s Norwegian translation – one of the first to be launched on Weblate – reached substantial completion, as did Polish.

By the end of March 2023, Grist was fully or near-fully translated into eleven non-English languages. Since then, community contributors have translated Grist – in part or in full – into another 20+ languages.

November 2024 – Translation by the numbers | 🌍

Translating Grist isn’t just about knowing how to say “row” in Russian or “chart” in Chinese. With all of its menus, options, buttons, and other UI elements, Grist currently contains 5,738 words organized into 1,462 text strings, all of which need to be translated for a “complete” translation of Grist. 

And a translator’s work is never done, as each translation evolves and grows alongside the product itself. When ANCT first began localizing Grist for their French users, the project only required translating around 600 text strings – less than half of what it requires today. Some languages that were at one point 100% translated are now incomplete.

As of November 2024, Grist is more than 90% translated into nine non-English languages, and more than 50% translated into eleven more. Eight additional languages are in the earlier stages of translation.

Of the languages with substantially-completed translations, Mandarin Chinese is the largest (~941M native speakers), and Basque is the smallest (~800K native speakers). Most recently, contributors have been working on translating Grist into Slovak, Basque, Turkish, and Catalan.

Perhaps most importantly, work has also been initiated on translating Grist from English (United States) into English (United Kingdom) – so you can one day change the colour of your cells, not the color. Our friends across the pond are absolutely buzzing about that one.

Translating more than UI with the help of AI

Translating Grist’s in-product text is no small feat, but there’s a lot more to be done to ensure that it’s as accessible to users in Cambodia as it is to users in California. Grist’s Help Center contains tens of thousands more words of useful resources for users to learn about Grist, from tutorials to case studies to technical support articles. Until recently, content in the Help Center has only been available in English.

To better support their French-speaking users, ANCT has begun working on a new translation project much in the style of the first: building infrastructure in Grist’s Help Center to allow for translations of support documentation and other educational materials.

Because any individual Help Center article might contain more text than the entirety of Grist, the initial Help Center translations are generated by OpenAI’s GPT-4o model, with an open invitation for community members to correct or improve any AI-translated content. Much like the first project to translate Grist, ANCT’s work on localizing the Help Center is already starting to spread, with support for three more languages currently underway.

A note on Grist’s French Help Center warns users of potential inaccuracies in articles translated by AI

Calling all contributors

All translations of Grist are community-driven, and we welcome new contributors to assist with ongoing translations, or to begin new translations of currently-unsupported languages. Visit the Weblate dashboard to see a list of completed and ongoing translations, and browse the Community thread about translations to learn more about becoming a contributor. To assist with translating Grist’s documentation, learn more on GitHub.