My WP Credits Wrap-Up Report: Contributing to Polyglots (es_CR)

I’m Paulo Vargas Valenciano, and this is my final report for the WP Credits program. Over the past several weeks (roughly 20 hours of dedicated work), I contributed to the Polyglots team by translating strings into Spanish (Costa Rica) on translate.wordpress.org. This report summarizes what I worked on, what I learned, and how the experience shaped me as a contributor.

Teams and projects I contributed to

I contributed to the Polyglots team, specifically the es_CR (Spanish – Costa Rica) locale. My focus was translating strings for the WordPress 6.8.x core project and the Administration subproject, submitting suggestions for review by the locale’s General Translation Editor.

Learning resources

I started with the WP Credits onboarding lessons on Learn WordPress, which covered the basics of the WordPress contributor ecosystem before I touched a single string. My mentor, Ulloa Matamoros Merlin Stephanie, guided me through the program’s structure and expectations. For the translation work itself, I relied directly on the translate.wordpress.org interface, including the Translation Memory suggestions and the string references and comments provided for each entry.

Challenges and solutions

My biggest early challenge was pace: my first translations sat in “Waiting” status without moving for a while. I resolved this by reaching out directly to Rita Robles Loaiza, the GTE reviewing submissions for es_CR — after that, the approval pace improved noticeably.

A second, more technical challenge was handling strings with embedded HTML tags and plural forms with placeholders like %s. It’s easy to translate the words correctly while breaking the string’s structure without noticing — a misplaced tag or a missing placeholder can invalidate a string even when the Spanish text itself reads perfectly. I solved this by reviewing each submission more carefully, paying specific attention to tags and placeholders before submitting.

My contributions

• Translator profile: profiles.wordpress.org/paulovar
• 100 translation suggestions submitted, 100 approved (52 approved mid-program, 49 approved near the end)
• Full project journal: paulovar.blog/journal-de-avance
• Post 1 — Mi primera entrada: ¿quién soy y por qué estoy en WPCredits?
• Post 2 — Lo que aprendí en el Onboarding
• Post 3 — Por qué elegí Polyglots (es_CR)
• Post 4 — Mi primera contribución real a Polyglots
• Post 5 — Lo que aprendí traduciendo cadenas con HTML y placeholders
• Post 6 — A mitad de camino: balance de mi progreso en WPCredits
• Post 7 — 100 traducciones aprobadas: cerrando el ciclo en Polyglots
• Community post in the WPCredits Slack channel sharing my blog: Slack message

Key learnings from the WP Credits program

Open source translation work is mundane on the surface — button labels, error messages, permission notices — but it’s exactly what keeps the experience usable for thousands of Spanish-speaking WordPress users every day. I also learned that progress in a volunteer-run project often depends on direct communication: reaching out to a real person on the other end of the review queue made more difference than waiting silently.

New skills gained

• Technical: translate.wordpress.org workflow (GlotPress), handling HTML tags and placeholder variables in localization strings, WordPress block editor (Gutenberg) for publishing
• Soft skills: direct communication with a reviewer to unblock a stalled process, careful self-review under technical constraints, documenting ongoing work publicly

Personal reflections and next steps

What surprised me most was how real this work felt once approved — strings with my name as translator now run in a project used by a huge portion of the web. That’s different from any other assignment I’ve turned in at university. Going forward, I plan to keep an eye on the es_CR translation queue and continue contributing when new strings appear, even after the program wraps up.