This is not fundamental to the process, but worth thinking about
If working in a team, you will need to plan this together as a team
Work from the dev branch
As stated a few times before, translators should work from the release branch
at least initially
But once a localization is finished, it might be better to start working from the dev branch
Why?
Two week prior to any major release, there is a feature freeze
contributors have to stop adding new features so that science team members at Open Science Tools can test the new features added to that point (minimizing the potential for bugs in the release)
There’s an opportunity here…
Getting translations in with the new release
During feature freeze, the maintainers could potentially notify translators of the new release
Then, translators could get in and translate off the dev branch, where the new features are, so that the language in question is fully updated exactly when the new major release comes out
This means that there’s no awkward period when languages aren’t up to date with the new release
When and how to set this up
This should be a team decision reached only after a localization is relatively complete
The maintainers would also need to know which languages are adopting this strategy so that they can notify the translators of the feature freeze