When the shelter in place order came in Budapest at the end of March, people were first pretty overwhelmed. People needed to acquire new skills in a matter of days, and I think we all turned into cooks, teachers and sysadmins overnight.

DIY and recipe blogs visits skyrocketed, and I also found myself listening to podcasts discussing how to make the most of the quarantine times. While researching how to use the time the best, it came up that this wasn’t the first time civilization hit the pause button. I’m sure you also heard, Shakespeare wrote King Lear in 1592 when he was quarantined during the great London plague. In another version of the story he wrote Antony and Cleopatra and Macbeth as well during his lockdown times.

What a tryhard.

Turning to translation

It is a consensus that keeping a tight, colorful schedule with recurring tasks helps you to survive the time in quarantine. With all the time on my hands and no talent in dramatical writing, I turned to the next coolest thing: translating. I used to translate movies and games into Hungarian for living years ago.

Being a daily user of Mautic and working for an agency that builds Mautic-based solutions for clients, my first thought was to translate it into Hungarian. By opening it to a new market, new developers could join the effort and contribute to the success by bringing their fresh ideas to the table. A benefit for everyone

You see, there are a couple of countries on this planet that suffer from island mentality. Japan would be one of them, and that is because they are on an actual island. You can be sure that no product can be successful unless it’s translated into Japanese.

Hungarians are similar (and not only because we write the last name first as Japanese people do), they have one of the worst foreign language knowledge in all Europe. It is like a cultural island. An international movie in Hungary won’t be ever successful without being dubbed, and Mautic cannot be successful without being translated. The issue is not with my talented developer countrymates’ language knowledge, but with the average marketing person who is the end user of Mautic, or the contacts who want to see the unsubscribe text in Hungarian.

I was thinking, if I have to do something every day not to go crazy, why not translate Mautic in the next 3 weeks.

Getting started with translating Mautic

The whole text was 4616 strings long and a couple hundred were done already. I ran through those, and realized that I might have to re-translate some of that as well. If I wanted to finish in 21 days, that makes it around 200 strings per day. That is not so bad!

I would never think it is so much fun to translate this software, which is partially made possible thanks to Transifex, the translation tool. The whole text is broken up into bundles, which makes it digestible. You feel great after completing a bundle. You can filter by topics and dates, which gives you the ability to choose the area you want to progress with. You can always see how long a bundle is, so you can choose one according to the time available.

There is a gamification side of the tool as well. You see the progress on a leaderboard, and every day you pass another country, you feel good about yourself! At least if you are as competitive as me! One day I completed 500 strings, just because I wanted to pass another country on the list. I was up until 2am! In your face Finland!

When I started, I went for the oldest strings, which opened up the history books: I learned all the failed ideas of Mautic, witnessed by those long obsolete strings about chat and other abandoned features.

Once the ancient times were passed I reached a point in time, where someone must have realized that help text is really important, and suddenly every single button and function was explained. Translating those felt like getting a free training in Mautic. I would recommend it to everyone who wants to learn this software seriously.

I managed to keep myself to the schedule, and it took me around 3 weeks to finish everything.

4616 strings are actually 16,000 words. That is an equivalent of a short novel. It makes me no Shakespeare, but if I managed to spark an interest in Hungary, that results in great plugins, and amazing contributions, then my effort already made sense.

And that Shakespeare story. Turned out to be a hoax!

The Mautic Community thanks you for your contributions, Joey!

Jozsef Keller is the translator of the Hungarian Mautic version and the CTO at Friendly, a Swiss Mautic solutions provider.

As training for the Rio Olympics  gets underway, we see the immense work that is done by these athletes in preparation for the games. In a similar manner, each of us works hard to compete in today’s business world. We plan, organize, implement and deploy new ideas. Although our environment may not be an open stadium, it is certainly an open marketplace. And unlike the real Olympics where only a single person is rewarded with a medal, everyone wins when you contribute to an open source project like Mautic.

Who can participate?

According to Olympic records, Cecilia Colledge was the youngest female competitor in the Olympics. She was only 11YO.  The oldest to ever compete? Arthur von Pongracz of Austria, who was 72. We’d like to approach the Mautic Summer Games in a same manner. We believe everyone has worth and value. That you can contribute and participate to this community in some way shape or form. So we’re excited to open up the competition to developers/creators/designers of all ages.

What are the events?

In preparation for the Mautic Summer Games we wanted to give you a rundown of all the different events that we will be offering. Regardless of your skill level or expertise, everyone should be able to participate.

UPDATED: Scoring for events

When do the Mautic Summer Games start/end?

Our Summer Games will run the entire month of August. So as you’re watching the Rio Olympics take some time to contribute to an international phenomenon that is disrupting an entire industry. When you participate in these summer games, you also add value to others.

What’s in it for me?

Our undying gratitude! ? Aside from the knowledge that you receive by helping people move horizons, there will be prizes! Be on the lookout for more detail on mautic.org as we design our scoring system and determine the prizes. Also keep in mind there will be prizes for country participation! Do you have colleagues that are willing and able to participate? Invite them to join in on the games!

By holding this fun-filled event, we hope to show the world that an inspired community, gathered around a common ideal, can change the way we communicate. And that given the proper tools and inspiration, we can create an open space where creative ideas can be  shared and horizons can be moved.

UPDATE: Summer Games Prizes

We’ve created our very own Mautic Summer Games swag bags! Proudly display your contribution to Mautic as you collect points to contribute to one of the fastest growing open source projects in the world. There will be a different set of swag for gold, silver and bronze, so do your best!

UPDATE: Rules of the Games

We’d like to request that all content produced or developed be done during the timing of the games (the month of August). Please no recycling of content that has already been created. We encourage everyone who is participating do use creativity and innovation when applying their talents to each of these events.