The TP-robot
The Translation Project robot (or TP-robot) is an email service that handles PO-file submissions. It checks whether the file can be accepted -- that is, whether a translator has filled out her disclaimer (where required) -- and whether her team allows her to do the work. It also calls msgfmt to see if the PO file is healthy, and checks for various other problems.
To use the robot, send in your PO file by email with the following Subject line (the word "TP-robot" at the start is no longer required, but may still be used):
PACKAGENAME-VERSIONNUMBER.TEAMCODE.po
The mail should be sent to <robot@translationproject.org>. You can expect a reply within ten minutes, but it may take a while longer when a project coordinator is busy registering things.
It works best to send the PO file as an attachment (optionally gzipped). Sending it in the body as plain text is dangerous because some mailers insert line breaks on their own, and because some mail relays are not 8-bit clean. When sending the file uuencoded, make sure to use base64 encoding, because the default encoding looks too much like spam and is thus likely to be rejected.
To make sending in a PO file real easy, the TP provides a script for this: translationproject.org/extra/sendpo.sh .
If the robot cannot decipher your email, or finds some small error in your PO file, it will complain. When you cannot solve the problem on your own, you can ask your team leader for help. If you suspect the robot is behaving badly, you can ask a project coordinator. In this latter case, be careful to send your message not to the robot address but to <coordinator@translationproject.org>.
The Translation Project robot is not allowed to update the registry with new information about maintainers, languages, or translators, nor is it allowed to process POT files. These things are still handled by hand. When a new POT file is being registered by a project coordinator, the registering script calls msgmerge when previous translations exist, so translators are notified of a PO file which is up-to-date. New POT files are announced automatically to a team's mailing list, if the team has asked for this feature.