suppose I should get better about these little updates.
[squirrelmail.git] / doc / translating.txt
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7f029a23 1How to translate SquirrelMail into another language?
2====================================================
3
4This document does not deal with CVS and how to upload translations to
5the repository.
6
71. First time translation
8-------------------------
9
10a) You must have gettext installed. If it is not installed you can
47c5f7fc 11 download the sources from
7f029a23 12 <URL:ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/gettext/>.
13
14b) Find the language code for the language you are going to translate
15 into. A list of language codes can be found at
e47c673b 16 <URL:http://lcweb.loc.gov/standards/iso639-2/langhome.html>. If
974dd86d 17 there is a 2 letter code for the language, use this.
7f029a23 18
19 Create a directory squirrelmail/locale/language_code/LC_MESSAGES/.
20 Copy squirrelmail/po/squirrelmail.po into this directory. This is the
21 file that is going to be translated.
22
1e63b430 23c) To translate the actual strings fill in the msgstr after each
47c5f7fc 24 msgid with the appropriate translation. There are a few tools which
1e63b430 25 can make this job a bit easier at
7f029a23 26 <URL:http://i18n.kde.org/translation-howto/gui-specialized-apps.html>.
27
28 Convert the translated squirrelmail.po into a binary file by
29 running the command "msgfmt -o squirrelmail.mo squirrelmail.po" in
30 the directory where the translated squirrelmail.po is residing.
31
32d) Add the language name and language code to the array at the top of
219c74f8 33 squirrelmail/functions/i18n.php.
7f029a23 34
e3c6f613 35There is also a small script in the po/ directory that can help in
36creating charset mappings from the mappings files that are provided by
37the Unicode consortium.
7f029a23 38
392. Maintaining translations
40---------------------------
41
1e63b430 42The text strings in the program will change over time. This means that
43strings that are already translated are no longer used and new strings
44are added. Therefore it is necessary to maintain the translations.
7f029a23 45
46a) There should always be an updated template containing all strings
47 in SquirrelMail in squirrelmail/squirrelmail.po. To merge all new
48 strings in this file into an existing translation run the command
49
50msgmerge squirrelmail/locale/language/LC_MESSAGES/squirrelmail.po \
51squirrelmail/po/squirrelmail.po > \
0a52832c 52squirrelmail/locale/language/LC_MESSAGES/squirrelmail.po.new
7f029a23 53
54 This should keep all strings that are unchanged and comment out all
55 strings that are no longer in use. You might want to make a copy
56 before doing this.
57
47c5f7fc 58b) Run msgfmt again to create a new binary file.
7f029a23 59
60
613. Updating the template
62------------------------
63
64This script comes from Serek:
65
66#!/bin/bash
4d732f7e 67xgettext --keyword=_ -keyword=N_ \
68 --default-domain=squirrelmail/po/squirrelmail \
69 -C squirrelmail/src/*.php
70xgettext --keyword=_ -keyword=N_ \
71 --default-domain=squirrelmail/po/squirrelmail \
72 -C -j squirrelmail/functions/*.php
7f029a23 73
47c5f7fc 74
75
76
77$ Id $