If you have ever used Thunderbird in Bulgarian, the subject of this month’s office hours is one of the contributors who made that possible! Office Hours hosts Heather and Monica have been lucky enough to chat with long-time localizer Bogamil Shopov at conferences like FOSDEM. Now, they’re sitting down to talk to him about how his contributor story started, and to hear the advice he has for anyone curious about being part of Thunderbird.

We’ll be back next time, checking in on Thunderbird Pro! It’s been almost a year since we sat down with members of our team making this possible. As we’ve slowly started opening up the service to our Early Birds from the waitlist, it seemed a great opportunity to learn what users can expect, now and in the future!

A Contributor Origin Story

Bogomil has been a contributor to Thunderbird from the start! Even if he didn’t like the UI in the early days, he loved our commitment to software freedom. He wanted people to have the software in their own language, and so he started localizing Thunderbird into Bulgarian. This was in the days before Pontoon, Mozilla’s localization platform, and so this wasn’t easy work! Another hurdle, which still happens, is that small language locales tend to have smaller numbers of contributors doing localizing work.

From Mentee to Mentor

Thankfully, Bogomil had unofficial mentors to help them find their way. On the localization side, he had a Bulgarian mentor who he, in turn, introduced to Mozilla and other open source projects. More experienced Mozilla contributors answered his questions as he expressed his interest in getting more involved. Bogomil points out that this need for both good onboarding docs and genuine human connection is still something all open source projects needs – and something we can keep improving!

Now Bogomil is the experienced mentor, and he’s had some key steps to helping grow the Thunderbird localizer community. He sends thank you notes to new translators and sends resources for specific computer and email terminology to new Bulgarian volunteers. He gives his mentees specific tasks to help focus their energy and excitement, and maybe even more importantly, he gives them encouragement.

This Speaker goes to 11

While Bogomil had given several public talks in Bulgarian before COVID, after 2020 he decided to try giving conference talks in English. His first talk was at Halfstack, sponsored by Mozilla, in Vienna, on what made him happy as a developer and IT person in general. He even brought a violin player on stage with him! His talk got a warm reception, and it encouraged him to keep talking about what brought him joy, whether it was using heavy metal to help him focus or his involvement with Thunderbird and open source. If you’ve ever considered giving a talk, especially about one of your passions, and hesitated, Bogomil would tell you to do it! People are more welcoming than you might think.

Tools and Advice

Bogomil still uses Pontoon for Thunderbird desktop translations, in addition to Weblate, where Thunderbird for Android and many other open source projects live. In addition to this localization platforms, he uses CoEdIt along with web-based tools that allow him to see how certain words were previously translated. And of course, he has three release channels of Thunderbird on his computer at all times, something most of the Thunderbird team understands!

From newer contributors, Bogomil has learned how language is changing and how to keep terms, like the Bulgarian word for “browser,” up to date, in addition to other feedback. His advice to new and potential volunteers is to be open to critique. This is especially true joining a project with a long history like Thunderbird, especially before wanting to change something. And he says don’t be afraid to do things and experiment, even if things go wrong.

Watch the Talk (available on PeerTube)

Resources

Desktop Thunderbird Translation docs: https://source-docs.thunderbird.net/en/latest/l10n/index.html

Desktop Thunderbird Translation on Pontoon: https://pontoon.mozilla.org/projects/thunderbird/

Thunderbird for Android Translation docs: https://docs.weblate.org/en/latest/user/translating.html

Thunderbird for Android Translation on Weblate: https://hosted.weblate.org/projects/tb-android/

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