I started translating WordPress into Marathi at an rtCamp contributor day in 2024. I expected an afternoon. I have since contributed to 21 projects, from WordPress itself to Twenty Twenty-Four, Create Block Theme and a handful of plugins.
Here is what nobody tells you about translating software: the hard part is not the language. It is the decisions.
Translate it, or keep it?
Some words have a perfectly good Marathi word. Some do not, and some have one that nobody uses. WordPress’s own Marathi admin menu shows both answers, sitting next to each other:
| English | In Marathi today | What happened |
|---|---|---|
| Plugins | प्लगिन्स | kept, written in Devanagari |
| Themes | थीम्स | kept |
| Posts | पोस्ट्स | kept |
| Comments | टिप्पण्या | translated |
| Pages | पृष्ठ | translated |
| Appearance | स्वरूप | translated |
Neither choice is wrong. पृष्ठ is correct Marathi for a page. But a Marathi speaker who has used a phone for ten years says “page”, and पोस्ट्स sits right above it in the same menu. The question every time is: what will the person reading this actually understand fastest?
My rule: translate the action, keep the thing. A plugin is a thing people already call a plugin. “Save”, “Delete”, “Search” are actions, and actions read best in Marathi: जतन करा, काढून टाका, शोधा.
Formal or friendly
Marathi has a formal and a familiar “you”, and a polite and a plain command. Software talks to everyone at once, so it has to pick. WordPress in Marathi uses the polite form: जतन करा, not जतन कर. It is the voice of a helpful shopkeeper, not a friend and not a government form.
The hard cases are the longer sentences, where polite can tip into stiff. A welcome message should not read like a notice from the tehsil office.
Consistency is the real job
One word, translated the same way, everywhere. It sounds simple across one screen. Across 21 projects and thousands of strings, it is most of the work.
Here is the same English word in two places in WordPress core today:
- Update on the menu: अपडेट
- Update on the button that saves your changes: अद्यतनित करा
Both are reasonable on their own. Together they are two words for one action, and a person has to learn both. This is what a shared glossary is for, and why I check it before I translate a new string, not after.
Why it matters
Most people in Maharashtra do not think in English first. Every string translated is one less moment where someone has to switch languages in their head to publish their own words.
And it is the easiest way to contribute to open source I know. You need a WordPress.org account, an afternoon, and a language you love.
