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 soources 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://www.dsv.su.se/~jpalme/ietf/language-codes.html>.
  17
  18    Create a directory squirrelmail/locale/language_code/LC_MESSAGES/.
  19    Copy squirrelmail/po/squirrelmail.po into this directory. This is the
  20    file that is going to be translated.
  21
  22 c) To translate the actual strings fill inn the msgstr after each
  23    msgid with the appropiate translation. There are a few tools which
  24    kan make this job a bit easier at
  25    <URL:http://i18n.kde.org/translation-howto/gui-specialized-apps.html>.
  26
  27    Convert the translated squirrelmail.po into a binary file by
  28    running the command "msgfmt -o squirrelmail.mo squirrelmail.po" in
  29    the directory where the translated squirrelmail.po is residing.
  30
  31 d) Add the language name and language code to the array at the top of
  32    squirrelmail/functions/i18n.php.
  33
  34
  35 2. Maintaining translations
  36 ---------------------------
  37
  38 the text strings in the program will change over time. This means that
  39 strings that are already translated is no longer used and new strings
  40 are added. Therefore it is neccessary to maintain the translations.
  41
  42 a) There should always be an updated template containing all strings
  43    in SquirrelMail in squirrelmail/squirrelmail.po. To merge all new
  44    strings in this file into an existing translation run the command
  45
  46 msgmerge squirrelmail/locale/language/LC_MESSAGES/squirrelmail.po \
  47 squirrelmail/po/squirrelmail.po > \
  48 squirrelmail/locale/language/LC_MESSAGES/squirrelmail.po
  49
  50    This should keep all strings that are unchanged and comment out all
  51    strings that are no longer in use. You might want to make a copy
  52    before doing this.
  53
  54 b) Rung msgfmt again to create a new binary file.
  55
  56
  57 3. Updating the template
  58 ------------------------
  59
  60 This script comes from Serek:
  61
  62 #!/bin/bash
  63 xgettext --keyword=_ -keyword=N_ --default-domain=squirrelmail/po/squirrelmail\
  64 -C squirrelmail/src/*.php
  65 xgettext --keyword=_ -keyword=N_ --default-domain=squirrelmail/po/squirrelmail\
  66 -C -j squirrelmail/functions/*.php
  67