I’m Andrey Pérez, and this is my final report for the WP Credits program. Over the past 12 weeks, I contributed to Polyglots. This report summarizes what I worked on, what I learned, and how the experience shaped me as a contributor.

For my contributions, I selected the WooCommerce plugin due to its extensive use as a fundamental tool for almost every eCommerce build in WordPress. Given its popularity and the growing market for online shopping, I recognized the importance of making this plugin accessible to a wider audience. I contributed significantly by creating translations in Spanish (Costa Rica), ensuring that Spanish spoken users could navigate and utilize the plugin effectively. This not only benefits the developers who rely on the plugin but also empowers businesses and entrepreneurs within the Spanish spoken community to thrive in the digital marketplace. My work helps bridge the gap in accessibility, making eCommerce more inclusive for everyone who uses this language.

So, to start learning about WPCredits, first I read the basic documentation that every new contributor needs to check out. This included the handbook made for the WPCredits course, which helped me understand the project step by step. I learned about the etiquette you need when contributing to an open-source project, like why collaboration and being active in the community is so important.

I also read the translations handbook, which helped me understand how translations work and gave me a first look at how Polyglots operates.

My mentor, Merlin Ulloa Matamoros, helped me a lot too. She showed me the tool I needed to start translating. From there, I could check the list of pending, done, rejected, and other status translations. All suggestions have to be done inside the tool, and that’s also where I got approvals, change requests, and rejections.

Since Spanish-CR has its own specific rules for translations, I also had to read the glossary for Costa Rica.

One of my main challenges during this process was learning how to make a good adaptation to Spanish, instead of falling into a literal translation. The goal is to get something more natural, that describes things better for the user. Because of this, I had to fix a few rejections and changes requested on some of my translations, you can check more details on one of my posts.

Another challenge I faced was more about how the process works. At the beginning, my blog had a really default look, mostly black and white without much design. I attended a Get Help With Your WordPress Site meetup and talked directly with the organizer, who helped me improve my blog and give it a better look. This also showed me that the community is always giving opportunities to learn and interact with each other.

The following translations were the ones suggested by me and that were approved during the past weeks:

Overall, I really liked being part of this community. One thing that stood out to me is how you can ask a question on the Slack channel and get an answer pretty quickly, people are always willing to help. The same thing happens on calls and meetings organized by other community members, there’s always someone ready to guide you or answer your doubts.

Looking forward, I’d like to keep contributing, maybe move into Core contributions at some point. But for that, I know I still need to improve my PHP knowledge first. Overall, I think contributing to communities like this is really valuable, it helps you grow, learn new things, and get closer to real work environments than you’d expect from just studying on your own.