doc/translating.txt

   1 How to translate SquirrelMail into another language?
   2 ====================================================
   3
   4 This document does not deal with Subversion 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.pot into this directory and rename
  21    it to squirrelmail.po. This is the 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/specialized-programs.html#gui-tools>.
  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) Create locale/language_code/setup.php file with your translation description.
  33    For example locale/tlh/setup.php
  34    <?php
  35    /* Klingon translation setup */
  36    $languages['tlh']['NAME'] = 'Klingon';
  37    $languages['tlh']['CHARSET'] = 'utf-8';
  38    ?>
  39
  40    Before SquirrelMail 1.5.1 translation description should be added to
  41    functions/i18n.php. Sample uses only required settings. Translation
  42    description can use other advanced settings. Check include/i18n.php
  43    or SquirrelMail developer's manual.
  44
  45 There is also a small script in the po/ directory that can help in
  46 creating charset mappings from the mappings files that are provided by
  47 the Unicode consortium.
  48
  49 2. Maintaining translations
  50 ---------------------------
  51
  52 The text strings in the program will change over time. This means that
  53 strings that are already translated are no longer used and new strings
  54 are added. Therefore it is necessary to maintain the translations.
  55
  56 a) There should always be an updated template containing all strings
  57    in SquirrelMail in squirrelmail/po/squirrelmail.pot. To merge all new
  58    strings in this file into an existing translation run the command
  59
  60 msgmerge squirrelmail/locale/language/LC_MESSAGES/squirrelmail.po \
  61 squirrelmail/po/squirrelmail.pot > \
  62 squirrelmail/locale/language/LC_MESSAGES/squirrelmail.po.new
  63
  64    This should keep all strings that are unchanged and comment out all
  65    strings that are no longer in use. You might want to make a copy
  66    before doing this.
  67
  68 SquirrelMail contains po/mergepo script that can merge strings without need
  69 to write that complex msgmerge command. Just put your translation name as
  70 option.
  71
  72 b) Run msgfmt again to create a new binary file.
  73
  74
  75 3. Updating the template
  76 ------------------------
  77
  78 SquirrelMail provides po/xgetpo script that extracts all the required
  79 strings and updates po/squirrelmail.pot file.
  80
  81
  82
  83 $ Id: $