How do I set up translations from languages other than English?

Launchpad does not and most likely will not support translations from any laguage other than English (en). This is for three reasons.

1. The gettext tools do not support this if the source language has a different plural forms set-up than English. So this would limit the choice of possible sources languages and not give us a universal approach.

2. Launchpad's global suggestions feature would be very hard to implement and probably limited if it had to take varying source languages into account. This would take away the advantage of the large translation memory that Launchpad has.

3. Using English as the base language allows you to reach the biggest number of translators, as most people will speak English besides their native language. This will ensure good progress on the translation of your project as more Launchpad users are able to help.

What about other variants of English? Launchpad encourages for all languages to use only the base variant, without a local appendix. This rule is broken up in a few cases but would it would only create confusion if this was done for the source language. The source language for Launchpad Translations is "en", for which American English is recommended. This is the common ground for global suggestions to be most effective.