27 March 2025
Raspberry Pi: localization goes communal
Raspberry Pi produce a series of affordable, credit card-sized single-board computers which promote computer science education and accessibility. Known for their versatility, they are widely used in education, DIY projects, robotics, and IoT applications. With a strong community and support for various operating systems, Raspberry Pi has become a popular tool among engineers and hobbyists.
In 2024, Raspberry Pi, the renowned maker of low-cost, high-performance computing platforms, partnered with Cambridge-based localization provider Alpha CRC to expand the reach of their educational materials.
As part of their mission to make computing accessible to enthusiasts, educators, and engineers worldwide, Raspberry Pi sought to translate and localize their Official Raspberry Pi Beginner’s Guide into seven languages: English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Brazilian Portuguese, and Japanese.
This ambitious project aimed to ensure that users across the globe could easily engage with Raspberry Pi’s products and get started with their computers, regardless of their native language.
Unlike standard user documentation, the Beginner’s Guide is a trade publication, printed as a physical book and included in Raspberry Pi kits. This elevated the importance of producing high-quality translations that resonated with Raspberry Pi’s global community of educators, hobbyists, and engineers.
With a passionate following and active online forums where users discuss Raspberry Pi applications, it was essential for Alpha CRC’s language teams to research terminology and expressions commonly used by enthusiasts in different languages and regions.
The localization process began with project preparation. Raspberry Pi provided Word source files formatted with styles that automated the incorporation of text, graphics, and metadata into the final print-ready PDFs. Some styles, such as those related to user interface (UI) elements or formatting directives, were excluded from translation. To manage this, Alpha CRC configured a custom filter and added tags to ensure that out-of-scope text remained untranslated. This setup required multiple rounds
of testing with raw machine translation (MT) outputs to ensure the filter and tagging adhered to Raspberry Pi’s guidelines.
Alpha CRC’s German team acted as the vanguard translation for the project, translating each chapter first and leaving notes and terminology guidance for other teams to follow. This collaborative approach ensured consistency across all languages.
The review phase was conducted in memoQ, with linguists having access to PDF previews generated by Raspberry Pi’s toolchain. These previews allowed the linguists to view their translations in full context, including UI elements, graphics, and code. This step also provided an opportunity to identify and resolve any errors introduced during PDF generation.
Raspberry Pi’s native-speaking community volunteers reviewed the translations during the client review phase. The volunteers made edits to the translations using bilingual RTF files, which were then imported into memoQ for final confirmation by Alpha CRC’s teams. Once all feedback was implemented, Alpha CRC delivered the finalized translations to Raspberry Pi.
Alpha CRC’s technical expertise ensured the translations were compatible with Raspberry Pi’s custom-developed toolchain, enabling the automated incorporation of UI terms, graphics, and Scratch programming examples. By involving Raspberry Pi’s passionate global community, Alpha CRC delivered translations that were not only accurate but also culturally relevant and engaging for local audiences. The use of a glossary, PDF previews, and a collaborative review process streamlined the project, ensuring timely delivery without compromising quality.
This project highlighted the importance of collaboration, both with the client and their community. By combining Alpha CRC’s expertise with Raspberry Pi’s open-source ethos, the team successfully localized a
complex, multi-faceted publication. Involving Raspberry Pi’s passionate global community also ensured that translations were not only accurate, but also engaging for local audiences.
Brian Jepson, Publishing Director at Raspberry Pi, stated that “Alpha CRC was a true partner in this. It took a little bit of work to get the workflow tuned, and we would not have succeeded without their patience, flexibility, and agility in optimising the workflow with us, all while we kept things moving forward!”
