For technical reasons, only languages listed in the ISO 639-3 standard can be supported directly in software translations. The official ISO 639-3 list can be found on the official ISO 639 Maintenance Agency web site. In case a translation effort is intended for a language not listed in ISO 639-3, the use of one of the reserved codes of ISO 639-3 will be needed.

If needed, the Debian Installer i18n coordinators will search for the ISO 639-3 code for your language if the new translator doesn't already know it, as well as the official English name for the language. Mutual agreement about these important parameters has to be reached at this point.

The name and contact address of an existing translation team as well as a backup coordinator are very valuable information to record at this step, but are not considered mandatory. The Debian Installer i18n coordinators must ask for these information to the language coordinator.

For this step to be considered complete, the entry for the future supported language must be completed by its ISO 639-3 code in the supported languages list XML file (see Section 6.2, “Supported languages list”, with the identification value in the nlp_step field. The fields about the backup coordinator and the translation teams are also filled if this information can be provided.