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How to do translations for sweep - a quick overview

includes information from Mathieu Roy and Silvia Pfeiffer

For more detailed information refer to: http://www.gnu.org/manual/gettext/index.html

(1) How to create and test a translation for a new language?

Grab the po/sweep.pot file and copy it to the new language, naming the file after a language code as defined by ISO 639: ll.po (e.g. fr.po), with a possible country-specific adaptation as in ll_CC.po.
[For the codes, refer to
http://www.gnu.org/manual/gettext/html_mono/gettext.html#SEC221]

Translate the strings in that file and save it in the /po folder.

Edit the "configure.in" file (in sweep-x.x.x folder), adding the new language to the "ALL_LINGUAS directive.

Should look like this :
ALL_LINGUAS="fr se de"
AM_GNU_GETTEXT

The next "configure" will include the new language, the next "make dist" will create the machine-readable translation, and the next "make install" will copy it to the system folder where gettext can find it.

Testing the new translation goes via setting of environment variables (LANG is usually enough).

Mathieu recommends:
[user@host /]$ export LANG="fr_FR"&&LC_ALL="fr"&&LINGUAS="fr" (configures this terminal until you close it) [user@host /]$ sweep
(should work in french)

(2) How to keep the code and its translations up to date?

When coding, keep marking displayed text with ("blah") where function calls are possible or N("blah") for statically defined strings. Where the string is actually used in the program, you need to put another _(variable) around it! A proposed guideline from gnu.org is to use format strings instead of string concatenation and to keep sentences within one string.

CAUTION: Be aware that when you mark a string with N_("blah"), this only marks it for translation.

When creating new code files (.[ch]) with translatable strings in them, they need to be added manually to the po/POTFILES.in file. The next "configure" will then automatically take care of creating the po/POTFILES file and the "make" thereafter will create the updated po/sweep.pot file. For merging those updated strings into existing translations, a "make dist" is required.

When a translator updates his/her translation file, copy it back to the /po directory. It will be compiled into machine-readable form with the next "make dist" and installed with the next "make install".