Internationalization

Mailman 2.1 is fully internationalized. This means you can add translations of all the email and web templates so that your users can interact with your mailing lists in their native language. Internationalization is handled as follows:
  • Each Mailman installation has a server default language. Mailman ships with US English as the server default.

  • Mailman comes with many supported languages, and if your language is on that list, it will just work.

  • Individual list owners can choose which languages they'd like their mailing list to support from the suite of site-enabled languages. The list owner can also select the list's default language. Mailing lists can thus be monolingual (with English or any other installed language as the default), or they can be multilingual.

  • Individual users can choose what their preferred language is, from the set of list-enabled languages. Thus, if a list is multilingual, the user can choose which language they'd prefer when interacting with Mailman.
It must be noted that Mailman never actually translates the messages that flow through its mailing lists. It's up to the list members to adhere to their community's language conventions.

Mailman Language Champions

Each language translation has a champion who coordinates updates and submits them to the Mailman project. If the language you are interested is listed here, please contact the champion for details. If your language is not listed here, or if you have general questions about I18N Mailman, please contact the mailman-i18n@python.org mailing list.

We are investigating using the Translation Project for future language support.

LanguageLocaleChampionStatus/Notes
Basque/Euskaraeu Mailman Basque translation project web page, and translation team email address Supported
Catalanca Robert Garrigos Supported
ChineseBig5, gb Max Yu Both Simplified Chinese (GB), and Big5 have been submitted but support may be incomplete. Assistance would be greatly appreciated!
Croatianhr Nino Katic Supported
Czechcs Dan Ohnesorg with assistance from V. Stanovsky. Supported
Danishda Soren Bondrup Supported
Dutchnl Danny Terweij, Sander Steffann Supported
Esperantoeo Marcio Malacarne and Sergey Tyrin Not yet submitted
Estonianet Anti Veeranna Supported
Finnishfi Pekka Haavisto Supported
Frenchfr Pascal GEORGE, Ousmane Wilane Supported. French translation team mailing list hosted by Fil at http://listes.rezo.net/mailman/listinfo/mailman-fr
Germande Peer Heinlein Supported
Hungarianhu Vizi Szilard, Szabolcs Szigeti, Gabor Funk Supported
Icelandicis Ólafur Garðarsson Not yet submitted
Italianit Simone Piunno Supported. Italian translation team mailing list at http://liste.ferrara.linux.it/listinfo/mailman-it/ or email to mailman-it@liste.ferrara.linux.it
Japaneseja Tokio Kikuchi Supported. See also the Japanized Mailman Page and also the mailing list for Japanese Mailman users, for which the archives are publically available.
Koreanko song at yaimma.co.kr Supported
Lithuanianlt Mantas Kriauciunas Supported
Norwegianno Daniel Buchmann Supported. See also the Norwegian Mailman Page.
Polishpl Bartosz Sawicki, Pawel Kolodziejczyk, Marcin Sochacki, Marcin Zaborowski Supported
Portuguesept, pt_BR Gleydson Mazioli da Silva, João Sá Marta, Rubens Queiroz de Almeida, Aleck Zander, Jose Roberto Kerne Jose Paulo Moitinho de Almeida Supported
Romanianro Stefaniu Criste Supported
Russianru Mikhail Sobolev Supported. See also the Russian Mailman list
Serbiansr Bojan Suzic Supported
Solveniansl Uros Kositer Supported
Spanishes Juan Carlos Rey Anaya Supported
Swedishsv Tomas Fasth and Anders Norrbring Supported
Turkishtr Erdinc Guler Not yet submitted
Ukrainianuk Maxim Dzumanenko Supported