A few years ago, when I was still really annoying to follow on Twitter and probably on this blog as well, I got a message on Skype. Someone asked me whether I wanted to stop talking and start to actually do something to make a difference.
They didn’t use those exact words. The person who invited me, Hils Cheyne is and has always been far too diplomatic to say something like that.
She had an idea that would help a lot of people in the Joomla Community. Together with a few other Joomla rock stars, she wanted to bring developers and volunteer translators together. They wanted to offer them a simple platform to come together and collaborate. End goal: translating as many extensions as possible and making the Joomla Community a better place.
There was some friction during the start. After all we were a rogue project lead by a group of people that didn’t really care about the opinion of the established Joomla order (I did, but I was really good at pretending I didn’t). We felt slighted by the “Project”, they felt we were sabotaging their translation efforts. Good times were had by all.
Although OpenTranslators was strictly coordinated by volunteers who had busy business- and personal lives we managed to make the project work. We brought together thousands of translators and extension developers. Millions of strings have been translated and helped end users by offering them an extension in their very own language.
OpenTranslators was, by all possible standards, a big success.
However – and you already read the title so this is no surprise – eventually the journey of OpenTranslators ended. People in charge of coordinating the effort decided that it was time to move on and to end a fantastic journey.
When the decision was made, I wasn’t involved, and that’s perfectly okay. I believe in being honest and my personal role was non-existing in the last few years. Due to some professional changes my day-to-day interaction with the software and the people behind it decreased dramatically, and that also meant I had no time left for OpenTranslators.
When I read the announcement last week, at first I felt a little bit disappointed. But I soon realized that instead of being “sad”, everyone involved with OpenTranslators should be incredibly proud of the journey we made and the many things we managed to realize. We had limited resources, but we had a passion for Joomla and the willingness to make something difficult work and managed to pull off one of the biggest projects in the Joomla history.
OpenTranslators all over the world, whether you were a translator, developer or a “managing member”, I salute you. It was an honor working by your side.