First of all, thank you for wanting to improve the Babel project. These guidelines may help you in your trip to enrich Babel with your skills, whatever they are.
Maybe the first way to contribute to the Babel project is to test it and to provide us feedback about your experience.
First, even if it may be obvious, have a look to the current documentation, the existing posts in the mailing list and the github issues. As computer scientists, we love when not repeating ourselves unnecessary.
The best place to ask your questions (and potentially to get answer) is the mailing list . You may also (but not always) chat in our irc room (at irc.codehaus.net, channel #babel)
We will examine and hopefully accept your code contribution with pleasure. Please have a look to the following points which may help you to contribute:
We would like to keep the contribution process as simple and effective as possible. This procedure may get improve with the time, do not hesitate if you have an opinion.