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[squirrelmail.git] / doc / translating.txt

How to translate SquirrelMail into another language?
====================================================

This document does not deal with CVS and how to upload translations to
the repository.

1. First time translation
-------------------------

a) You must have gettext installed. If it is not installed you can
   download the sources from
   <URL:ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/gettext/>.

b) Find the language code for the language you are going to translate
   into. A list of language codes can be found at
   <URL:http://lcweb.loc.gov/standards/iso639-2/langhome.html>. If
   there is a 2 letter code for the language, use this.

   Create a directory squirrelmail/locale/language_code/LC_MESSAGES/.
   Copy squirrelmail/po/squirrelmail.pot into this directory and rename 
   it to squirrelmail.po. This is the file that is going to be translated.

c) To translate the actual strings fill in the msgstr after each
   msgid with the appropriate translation. There are a few tools which
   can make this job a bit easier at
   <URL:http://i18n.kde.org/translation-howto/specialized-programs.html#gui-tools>.

   Convert the translated squirrelmail.po into a binary file by
   running the command "msgfmt -o squirrelmail.mo squirrelmail.po" in
   the directory where the translated squirrelmail.po is residing.

d) Add the language name and language code to the array at the top of
   squirrelmail/functions/i18n.php.

There is also a small script in the po/ directory that can help in
creating charset mappings from the mappings files that are provided by
the Unicode consortium.

2. Maintaining translations
---------------------------

The text strings in the program will change over time. This means that
strings that are already translated are no longer used and new strings
are added. Therefore it is necessary to maintain the translations.

a) There should always be an updated template containing all strings
   in SquirrelMail in squirrelmail/po/squirrelmail.pot. To merge all new
   strings in this file into an existing translation run the command

msgmerge squirrelmail/locale/language/LC_MESSAGES/squirrelmail.po \
squirrelmail/po/squirrelmail.pot > \
squirrelmail/locale/language/LC_MESSAGES/squirrelmail.po.new

   This should keep all strings that are unchanged and comment out all
   strings that are no longer in use. You might want to make a copy
   before doing this.

SquirrelMail contains po/mergepo script that can merge strings without need
to write that complex msgmerge command. Just put your translation name as 
option.

b) Run msgfmt again to create a new binary file.


3. Updating the template
------------------------

SquirrelMail provides po/xgetpo script that extracts all the required 
strings and updates po/squirrelmail.pot file.



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