Season of KDE 2026 - Lokalize Glossary Tab Improvements (Midterm)

My name is Aditya Sarna, and I have been working on Lokalize, a translation software, as part of Season of KDE 2026. Along with my fellow mentee Jaimukund Bhan, I have been assigned to work on improvements to the Glossary tab, including both UI/UX enhancements and addressing a substantial list of bugs.

How I got here

I first came across KDE while exploring organizations that had participated in Google Summer of Code (GSoC) in previous years. During this process, I also discovered Season of KDE (SoK), which felt like a great opportunity to get involved. I joined the KDE Mentorship Matrix chat, where Finley Watson was kind enough to guide us. I then explored the list of tasks under Lokalize for SoK in detail and drafted proposals for the first two tasks.

While researching the first idea, I came across the KDE Human Interface Guidelines, which helped form the foundation for the suggestions I put forward in my next proposal. I was delighted to be selected for the second task.

Setting up

We started a little early, getting everything in order. I spent time familiarising myself with the Lokalize codebase and understanding the platform. I also joined an early discussion on the possible direction for creating and saving the glossary file, and that work was subsequently completed by Jaimukund. In the meantime, I began scoping out the necessary UI/UX improvements.

UI/UX improvements

The task involved replacing plain text labels ("+", "-") with proper icon buttons and adding tooltips to all the add and remove buttons on the page. [MR 273].

I also created a Figma design for a redesign of the deletion workflow, which had been suggested by the KDE Visual Design Group. The goal was to improve the workflow for translators.

Engaging with translators

One of the most valuable steps in this project was reaching out to the translators mailing list. The insights we gathered from that discussion helped us uncover more issues and articulate the problems better. The translator's real-world experience gave us a much clearer picture of the pain points in the current Glossary workflow and we subsequently worked through those issues in the weeks that followed.

A bump in the road

Progress slowed for a while as I got caught up with university exams. Balancing coursework alongside an open-source project was challenging.

Simple yet useful

The first issue I worked on after returning was a simple yet useful change that I had also proposed earlier. This involved moving the add and remove buttons to sit next to the search bar.Grouping them together created a clearer call to action, and the button placement now mirrors the Glossary editor pane, helping standardise the UI and match user expectations.

Acknowledgements

A huge thank you to my mentor, Finley Watson, for his constant guidance, patience, and thoughtful feedback throughout this project. Thanks as well to the Visual Design Group and the translator community for their valuable input, and to the KDE community as a whole for being so welcoming. Contributing to software used by translators all over the world has been an incredibly rewarding experience. I look forward to continuing to give back to KDE long after SoK is complete.