doc/translating.txt

   1 How to translate SquirrelMail into another language?
   2 ====================================================
   3
   4 This document does not deal with CVS and how to upload translations to
   5 the repository.
   6
   7 1. First time translation
   8 -------------------------
   9
  10 a) You must have gettext installed. If it is not installed you can
  11    download the sources from
  12    <URL:ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/gettext/>.
  13
  14 b) Find the language code for the language you are going to translate
  15    into. A list of language codes can be found at
  16    <URL:http://lcweb.loc.gov/standards/iso639-2/langhome.html>. If
  17    there is a 2 letter code for the language, use this.
  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
  23 c) To translate the actual strings fill in the msgstr after each
  24    msgid with the appropriate translation. There are a few tools which
  25    can make this job a bit easier at
  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
  32 d) Add the language name and language code to the array at the top of
  33    squirrelmail/functions/i18n.php.
  34
  35 There is also a small script in the po/ directory that can help in
  36 creating charset mappings from the mappings files that are provided by
  37 the Unicode consortium.
  38
  39 2. Maintaining translations
  40 ---------------------------
  41
  42 The text strings in the program will change over time. This means that
  43 strings that are already translated are no longer used and new strings
  44 are added. Therefore it is necessary to maintain the translations.
  45
  46 a) 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
  50 msgmerge squirrelmail/locale/language/LC_MESSAGES/squirrelmail.po \
  51 squirrelmail/po/squirrelmail.po > \
  52 squirrelmail/locale/language/LC_MESSAGES/squirrelmail.po.new
  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
  58 b) Run msgfmt again to create a new binary file.
  59
  60
  61 3. Updating the template
  62 ------------------------
  63
  64 This script comes from Serek:
  65
  66 #!/bin/bash
  67 xgettext --keyword=_ -keyword=N_ \
  68   --default-domain=squirrelmail/po/squirrelmail \
  69   -C squirrelmail/src/*.php
  70 xgettext --keyword=_ -keyword=N_ \
  71   --default-domain=squirrelmail/po/squirrelmail \
  72   -C -j squirrelmail/functions/*.php
  73
  74
  75
  76
  77 $ Id $