If you’re working on a localization project and would like to have the translation work done online, Pootle is currently the best option I found. Having an online translation platform is a great option for collaborative work since your team of translators can work from different parts of the world simultaneously.
Pootle has a nice user rights management feature allowing you to set the responsibilities of each team member in your project:
- those that can submit translation suggestions;
- reviewers;
- team leaders designating specific tasks and setting deadlines;
- technical management of the translation files.
All of the translation work done easily online. The translator chooses the project page, sees the source string on the left and on the right just start writing the translation. If needed, he/she can also leave notes for other translators or reviewers.
Pootle works well with PO or XLIFF files and you can export these to offline .csv format or directly to .mo for direct usage.
Knowing well Pootle, you’ll discover an incredible number of other features such as: setting translation memories; direct integration with version control systems, acquiring translation statistics and more. A large number of famous projects are currently using Pootle, including Firefox, OpenOffice, Compiz Fusion, and laconi.ca.
With a project I’m working on, it was a bit of a hassle to get it installed but once ready to go, a try life saver it was.