Kjartan Maraas GNOME

kmaraas@online.no

2000 Kjartan Maraas How do I translate the GNOME desktop to other languages than english? This is a question that pops up quite frequently on the various GNOME mailing-lists and IRC channels. Well, this is a feeble attempt at writing a guide to translating all the different parts of the GNOME desktop environment, and believe me there are a few well hidden files containing translatable strings. There are different opinons on what is most important when translating. Some think that docs are more important and others think that the interface, menus and dialogs are more important. This is something that the translator must decide for him/herself. I'll try to cover both here. My opinion is that they are both of equal importance, but that the menus and dialogs are the ones the user first meet and so these are what makes the users realize that the apps are really available in their own language. Of course there is nothing stopping you from doing both at once, except time and resources. There are a few other docs that contain valuable information for a translator such as the gettext documentation and a few guides on the web. Look at GNOME documentation project's doctable for a few pointers to other resources. Also the gettext documentation describes how to set up emacs to work with .po files in what is called po-mode. I recommend that you try this out. I have found it to speed up my own work considerably. When the programmers insert user-visible text strings into the programs, they enclose them in _() or N_(). These are macros that gettext use to extract the strings from the source code and put them into a message catalog. This is placed in a subdirectory called po/ in the top directory of the programs' source code and is called for example gnome-libs.pot. The first thing you do when starting a new translation is to copy this file to XX.po where XX is your language code (specified in ISO 634, which is a standard containing language codes). After doing this you can start translating the actual content of the file. The file contains a number of strings of the form: #: panel/panel_config.c:1050 msgid "Color to use:" msgstr "Farge som skal brukes:" The first line tells you which source file the string comes from. panel/panel_config.c at line 1050. The next is the original string from the .c file, and the last is the translation. The last line will be empty when you first copy the .pot file to XX.po. Now to have your translation included in the build process you must add the language code to configure.in in the ALL_LINGUAS environment variable. For readability i recommend you add it in alphabetical order. The name for an application in the menu is defined in a file with a .desktop extension. The format of the file is as follows: [Desktop Entry] Name=Dia Name[ja]=Dia Name[no]=Dia Name[pl]=Dia Name[fr]=Dia Comment=A Diagram Editor Comment[ja]=¥À¥¤¥ä¥°¥é¥à¥¨¥Ç¥£¥¿ Comment[no]=Diagramredigering Comment[pl]=Edytor diagramów w Gtk+ Comment[fr]=Un éditeur de diagrammes Exec=dia Icon=dia_gnome_icon.png Terminal=0 Type=Application The first line is the name of the application in english and the following lines have the different translations, where the language is specified by [XX] where XX is the language code. The comment line is similar, and the text in this line shows up if you add a launcher for the program on the panel and position the pointer over the icon. Just like a tooltip for a button in a program. The names for the menus themselves are defined in files with a .directory extension. These are found in the gnome-core module in the directory desktop-links. Here you will also find .desktop files for some standard applications on a Unix machine, such as emacs, netscape, rxvt etc. The format is the same for the .directory files as for the .desktop ones. In every application that has sounds for events there is a file with .soundlist as the extension. This file contains descriptions of sounds and their corresponding events. The file looks like this: [__section_info__] description=Panel description[ca]=Plafó description[es]=Panel description[et]=Paneel description[fr]=Panneau de GNOME description[gl]=Panel description[ko]=ÆгΠdescription[no]=Panel description[pl]=Panel description[pt]=Painel description[wa]=Scriftôr [open] file=panel/slide.wav description=Expand description[ca]=Expandir description[es]=Expandir description[et]=Ilmumine description[fr]=Expansion description[gl]=Expandir description[ko]=³ÐÈ÷±â description[no]=Utvid The format is very similar to the .desktop and .directory files. The descriptions are found in the control-center (gnomecc). The section: [__section_info__] tells us that the name of the program for which the sound events are used is next. The [open] section has the sound event for the [open] action on the panel (clicking the foot-menu), and the rest is just like the .desktop files. The descriptions of mime-type actions are kept in files with the extension .mime. These files are found in some applications and also in the gnome-libs/gnome-data directory. The format is: text/plain: open=command %f open.tag1.Do this and that=this-and-that %f [es]open.tag1.Hacer esto y aquello=this and that %f open.tag2.Gzip it=gzip %f [es]open.tag2.Comprimir con gzip=gzip %f open.tag3.Mail it=mail %{Recipient} < %f [es]open.tag3.Enviarlo por correo=mail %{Recipient} < %f open.tag4.Example=example %f There are a few applications that have translatable strings hidden in other files as well. Dia the diagram editor is one of them. It has strings containing descriptions of diagram objects in files with .sheet extensions. The format is XML and looks like this: Chronogram Objets pour l'écriture de chronogrammes. Objects to design chronogram charts ]]> There is no big difference here, just follow the lead of the existing translation as in this example, using your language code in xml:lang="". Another recent find used in the 1.2 version of the panel is panel.hints. This file contains useful hints that pop up when the panel starts up. It is also in XML format. Example follows: Right click on the panel to get a menu To add an applet, right click on a panel then choose 'Applets', then pick an applet from the list To manipulate a panel applet, right click anywhere over the applet Manipulaci s aplety je mo¾no dosáhnout pravým tlaèítkem my¹i ]]> Here the first hint is not translated, and second one is. This is all very similar to the previous example and thus I leave the rest as an excercise for the reader. :) This is it for now. I hope someone will find this document useful and I can promise that it will be revised shortly and hopefully I will manage to keep it up-to-date as things move on. Cheers and thanks for your time. Let's make GNOME the most available desktop out there, language-wise at least.