We've put together some guidelines for translating Drupal Association marketing material. The goal is to help local associations create translations that are inline with the Drupal brand, while also speaking to the local audience.

Translation Guidelines

  • Localize the tone of voice to your cultural context if needed (e.g. more or less formal), but ensure that it projects the values of Innovation, Inclusivity, and Excellence (see details below)

  • If you want to make significant changes to the tone, voice or style, cultural context, or language variation, consider creating an alternate version

  • It’s okay to have multiple versions for a single language (e.g. French translations for France, Belgium, Switzerland, Quebec, or English translations for England, Canada, etc.)

  • Keep quotes as similar as possible to the original

  • Cover the same main messages and talking points, and add extended material your audience could find useful as an attachment or add-on (e.g. for a more technical audience)

  • If you’re collaborating with others on translating a document, make suggestions or comments to propose changes

  • If you come across any errors or issues with the original content, flag this to the Drupal Association so that we can fix the original

Press Release Media Contact

Please keep the Global Drupal Association as a media contact, and leave a space to add your local association as a contact as well. 

Pronouns

On Drupal.org, we use “Your” to convey the importance of our audience needs. And “We” to convey that we are real people and care about you. Adapt this to the pronouns that make the most sense for your local context, to balance familiarity with formality.

Tone of Voice (from the Drupal Brand Book)

In general, we want Drupal marketing material to follow a common tone of voice. But this can be applied differently to your local context.

Tone of voice is set by the core values of Drupal and how we speak to the world about what we’re aiming to accomplish. While Drupal is a product of the Drupal community, it is an outward-facing product with a similar but distinct set of values:

  • Innovation: Inspiring and aspiring statements that drive creative thinking—focused on our customers’ vision of what’s next.

  • Inclusivity: Much like the principles of open source, we are open to contribution from all. As such, we use non-gender defining language (i.e. people, not guys), and don’t use gender-specific job titles (i.e. chairman), etc.

  • Excellence: We strive to be helpful, but not preachy. We don’t make promises or commands, but instead aim to say something of substance.

We use business casual language. We’re professional (no shorthand y’all), but maintain a distinct conversational Drupal voice.

Keep copy simple; don’t overuse jargon. Don’t use colloquialisms and slang at all — we have a global audience and these rarely translate.

References