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Translate PyGMT documentation into Spanish #4455
Description
Hi PyGMT team!
I would like to contribute to the project by translating the documentation (starting with the tutorials or quickstart guide) into Spanish. This could help make PyGMT more accessible to students and researchers in Latin America.
Before I start making any PRs, I wanted to ask:
Do you currently have an i18n infrastructure set up for the docs (e.g., sphinx-intl), or a preferred way to handle translations?
Where would you prefer the translated files to be located within the repository?
Let me know if you are open to this and how I can best align with the project's workflow. Thanks!
Activity
github-actions commentedon Mar 19, 2026
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weiji14 commentedon Mar 19, 2026
¡Hola! @Silver19368 👋 Thanks for thinking about this! Always keen to spread PyGMT to more languages.
We haven't set up any sphinx internationalization plugin yet, the most we have currently is an external link to @andrebelem's tutorial in Portuguese at https://www.pygmt.org/v0.18.0/external_resources.html#tutorials. I will also mention @whyjz's comment at #770 (comment) that points to his https://github.com/whyjz/GMT-tutorials website that has a weblate page which now includes 7 languages. That last one might be an easier entrypoint if you'd like to help translate just tutorials or the quickstart guide?
I'll also let other maintainers chime in, and tag @Esteban82 to see if there's other related resources around Latin America.
Silver19368 commentedon Mar 20, 2026
Hi @weiji14,
Thank you so much for the quick response!
I will definitely check out the Weblate link from @whyjz's repository. It sounds like an excellent and very accessible starting point for translating the tutorials.
I'll also wait to hear from @Esteban82, in case he has any additional comments or knows of other ongoing efforts in Latin America before I dive in.
Also, I'd love to know if there is any other way I can help with PyGMT tutorials or guides. When I first started using the library, the learning curve wasn't easy, but I owe a lot to this tool. I'm really motivated to actively contribute so that new users can understand it and get the most out of it.
Best regards,
Silver
Esteban82 commentedon Mar 20, 2026
Hi @Silver19368
Nothing to add from my side, but great to see you getting involved!
seisman commentedon Apr 14, 2026
I'm not sure if it's still worth the time to translate documentation into other languages. Translation tools like Google Translate or DeepL have become more powerful in the AI age. Can we really do better than these tools?
yvonnefroehlich commentedon Apr 14, 2026
I was actually also wondering about AI here. Translating the entire documentation is a huge task, and even more so keeping it up to date, considering changes to the codes, e.g., the new Alias system, parameter names for the modifiers, and high-level methods. I agree language barriers slow down the learning curve. Thus, I feel having tutorials in various languages can be helpful for beginners. They can be add to the "External Resources" page, similar to andrebelem's tutorial in Portuguese.
Silver19368 commentedon Apr 15, 2026
I agree that with tools like Google Translate, translating all the documentation might not be the most efficient approach, especially considering the maintenance it involves. I could focus on getting back to adding examples to the code.
seisman commentedon Apr 15, 2026
I'm closing the issue. Contributing examples are always welcome.
hwhsu1231 commentedon Oct 3, 2026
Hello, @Silver19368 @weiji14 @Esteban82 @yvonnefroehlich @seisman
I'm the founder of the @localizethedocs organization, and I’m glad to announce that the 🎉 pygmt-docs-l10n 🎉 project is now published:
The goal of this project is to translate The PyGMT Documentation into multiple languages. Translations are contributed via the Crowdin platform, automatically synchronized with the GitHub repository, and can be previewed on GitHub Pages.
Feel free to join us if you're interested in translating the documentation. See the announcement for more details.