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>. 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 inn the msgstr after each
  24    msgid with the appropiate translation. There are a few tools which
  25    kan 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. For a reference of correct two character
  34    country codes refer to this <URL:http://palimpsest.stnford.edu/lex/iso639.html>.
  35
  36
  37 2. Maintaining translations
  38 ---------------------------
  39
  40 the text strings in the program will change over time. This means that
  41 strings that are already translated is no longer used and new strings
  42 are added. Therefore it is neccessary to maintain the translations.
  43
  44 a) There should always be an updated template containing all strings
  45    in SquirrelMail in squirrelmail/squirrelmail.po. To merge all new
  46    strings in this file into an existing translation run the command
  47
  48 msgmerge squirrelmail/locale/language/LC_MESSAGES/squirrelmail.po \
  49 squirrelmail/po/squirrelmail.po > \
  50 squirrelmail/locale/language/LC_MESSAGES/squirrelmail.po.new
  51
  52    This should keep all strings that are unchanged and comment out all
  53    strings that are no longer in use. You might want to make a copy
  54    before doing this.
  55
  56 b) Rung msgfmt again to create a new binary file.
  57
  58
  59 3. Updating the template
  60 ------------------------
  61
  62 This script comes from Serek:
  63
  64 #!/bin/bash
  65 xgettext --keyword=_ -keyword=N_ \
  66   --default-domain=squirrelmail/po/squirrelmail \
  67   -C squirrelmail/src/*.php
  68 xgettext --keyword=_ -keyword=N_ \
  69   --default-domain=squirrelmail/po/squirrelmail \
  70   -C -j squirrelmail/functions/*.php
  71