Language/dialect selection isn’t a popularity contest. Like everything else here it’s a volunteer activity and J.F. Serrador has been voluntarily translating GnuCash into Spanish for almost 15 years; since Weblate made helping with translations easier 13 others have contributed.
The translation system accommodates national and regional versions of languages via suffixes, so formally Spanish(Spain) would be es_ES. I am not certain that Sr. Serrador is Spanish, but I wouldn’t be surprised. It’s not possible to change the language of a translation (e.g. to make plain Spanish (es.po) into Spanish-Spain(es_ES.po)) so that translation isn’t going to change, and J.F. Serrador will continue to be the arbiter of what Spanish dialect is used there. I note that he’s been busy today reverting Ape May’s changes in Weblate (see https://github.com/Gnucash/gnucash/pull/2184). Weblate offers 28 Spanish variants including American (es_US), Argentina (es_AR), Bolivia (es_BO), Chile (es_CL), Columbia (es_CO), Costa Rica (es_CR), Cuba (es_CU), Dominican Republic (es_DO), Ecuador (es_EC), El Salvador (es_SV), Mexico (es_MX), Nicaragua (es_NI), Panama (es_PA), Peru (es_PE), Puerto Rico (es_PR), Uruguay (es_UR), and Venezuela (es_VE). There’s also Eurom (es_150), Latin America (es_419), informal and formal (es@informal and es@formal respectively) and a bunch with codes but no names: es_CARES, es__ES@new, es_GT, es_HN, es_LATAM, es_LAVA, and es_PY. GT, HN, and PY are the ISO-3166-2 codes for Guatemala, Honduras, and Paraguay. I guess LATAM is supposed to be Latin America but I have no clue what CARES or LAVA are supposed to be. The locale-driven language selection works only with the two-letter country codes so no matter what we use for that many users will have to override the locale selection in their environment or GnuCash environment Somebody made a start at a Spanish-Nicaragua translation in 2001 and it’s still there, though after 25 years of string changes it covers only 13% of the strings now. Aside from POT updates it’s been touched only once in those 25 years. J. F. Serrador unfuzzied one string in 2022. If somebody (apemay?) would like to step up and do a Latin American Spanish translation they can either work on es_NI or I can create a different variant and retire es_NI. Regards, John Ralls > On Mar 5, 2026, at 8:45 AM, William Prescott <[email protected]> wrote: > > Are these translation differences related to the difference between the > Iberian or Peninsular Spanish used in Spain, and the Spanish used in Latin > America. The changes suggested sound more natural to my ear. I live and > learned Spanish in Mexico. > > According to Wikipedia, 455 million of the 498 million people who speak > Spanish as their native language are located in Latin America. Given that, it > probably makes sense that Gnucash use a version aligned with Latin American > usage. > > So I would cast my vote in favor of the changes Apemay is suggesting, but I > don't have any comments on the priority that should be given to any changes. > > Best wishes, > Will > > On 5 Mar 2026, at 10:13, Ape May <[email protected]> wrote: > > Hello John, > > Just to clarify: it wasn't a personal disagreement or a critique of > any contributor. I only wanted to point out some translation errors > that make the app harder to use, not anything related to personal > preferences. > > I also didn’t expect a reply within three hours. I mentioned the most > recent suggestions only as examples. > > I’ll stop here to avoid flooding the list. I leave it to the Spanish > team to decide how they want to handle it. > > Regards, > apemay > > El jue, 5 mar 2026 a las 4:47, John Ralls (<[email protected]>) escribió: >> >> This seems to be a disagreement about Spanish usage, Using your first >> example I found >> https://hosted.weblate.org/translate/gnucash/gnucash/es/?q=+source%3ATop++target%3ACima+&sort_by=-priority%2Cposition&checksum=#history >> where you proposed a pretty substantial rewrite of the string. The person >> who translated and approved the existing string, J.F. Serrador, has been >> translating GnuCash into Spanish for almost 15 years and that particular >> translation has been in place for well over a year. >> >> I also note that your comment on the string was posted at 9AM my time and >> this email was written only 3 hours later. Translation is, like everything >> else about GnuCash development, a volunteer activity undertaken in >> volunteers’ spare time. Three weeks would be a more reasonable time to wait >> than 3 hours, and even that assumes Sr. Serrador has notifications enabled >> for comments on translations. If he has to proactively visit the string page >> to know if there’s a comment the odds are pretty strongly against his ever >> noticing. >> >> Regards, >> John Ralls >> >> On Mar 4, 2026, at 12:36, Ape May <[email protected]> wrote: >> >> Hello, >> >> I’ve been a GnuCash user for several years, and in the last few weeks >> I’ve been reviewing the Spanish translation in Hosted Weblate to fix >> several errors I found in the application. >> >> I believe the translation needs a full review, because some incorrect >> terms in the glossary have spread to many approved strings and make it >> hard to use GnuCash in Spanish. Some examples: >> - “Top” translated as "Cima" instead of "Arriba" >> - “Bottom” translated as "Suelo" instead of "Abajo" >> - "Tab" translated as "Lengüeta" instead of "Pestaña" >> - “Report” translated as "Boletín" instead of "Informe" >> - “Employee” translated as "Operador" instead of "Empleado" >> - "Issues" translated as "Emisiones" instead of "Problemas" >> - Inconsistent use of capital letters in menus >> >> Many of these strings were approved with these incorrect translations, >> so I can’t fix them myself. I have already submitted dozens of >> suggestions, but they are accumulating. >> >> At the moment, I'm available to help fix these problems. I could do >> this directly and much more efficiently if you grant me reviewer >> permissions. Otherwise, I can continue making suggestions if you >> prefer. >> >> Just let me know as well if the current team already has this covered. >> >> Regards, >> @apemay >> https://hosted.weblate.org/user/apemay/ >> _______________________________________________ >> gnucash-devel mailing list >> [email protected] >> https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-devel >> >> > _______________________________________________ > gnucash-devel mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-devel > > _______________________________________________ > gnucash-devel mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-devel _______________________________________________ gnucash-devel mailing list [email protected] https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-devel
