Gettext
is a set of tools, guidelines, directory naming conventions
and a runtime library. Together, they are the standard way to translate
applications in the *nix environment. Don't be scared, you can use
it on Windows as well. I don't want to describe the whole system here,
just the things you need to translate your application - you can read
the manual
if you want more information.
The gettext system translates replaces whole strings with the translated
equivalent in the target language. This means that you don't have to
invent array keys but can keep the original string in the code, which
makes it a lot more readable. The translations are written down in
so-called .po-files, where "po" stands for
"portable object". They contain the human-readable and human-editable
translation of the strings to the target language. To speed up the
live-translation process when the application is running, they are
compiled to .mo-files, "machine object" files.
These files are required to be in a certain directory structure:
locale
-language-
LC_MESSAGES
-applicationname-.po
-applicationname-.mo
de
LC_MESSAGES
appwizard.po
appwizard.mo
tuxracer.mo
es
LC_MESSAGES
appwizard.mo
tuxracer.mo
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Here you see, that there are 2 languages: german (de) and spanish (es).
They contain both the machine object files for the applications
AppWizard and TuxRacer. The
original translation files are not required for running the program,
and so only the german translation file for AppWizard is here.
If you are on *nix, have a look at
/usr/share/locale/. You will find the translations
for many programs there.
A .mo translation file looks the following way:
# SOME DESCRIPTIVE TITLE.
# Copyright (C) YEAR Free Software Foundation, Inc.
# FIRST AUTHOR <EMAIL@ADDRESS>, YEAR.
#
#, fuzzy
msgid ""
msgstr ""
"Project-Id-Version: PACKAGE VERSION\n"
"POT-Creation-Date: 2002-04-06 21:44-0500\n"
"PO-Revision-Date: YEAR-MO-DA HO:MI+ZONE\n"
"Last-Translator: FULL NAME <EMAIL@ADDRESS>\n"
"Language-Team: LANGUAGE <LL@li.org>\n"
"MIME-Version: 1.0\n"
"Content-Type: text/plain; charset=CHARSET\n"
"Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit\n"
#: gettext_example.php:12
msgid "A string to be translated would go here"
msgstr "Ein string der übersetzt werden soll steht hier"
msgid "Really quit?"
msgstr "Wirklich beenden?"
msgid "This is a glade language test script"
msgstr "Dies ist ein Glade Sprach-test script"
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The first 15 lines are a sort of header, which can be customized
with dates and authors.
After the header the translation begins: msgid
tells what shall be translated, and msgstr is
the translation. Special chars in strings can be escaped as
usually with a backslash \.
After translating your strings, you have to compiles the
.po to .mo files
which is done by using the msgfmt tool.
On *nix, you should have it somewhere; on Windows you can get
it with mingw32.
Go to the LC_MESSAGES directory and just call the compiler:
which will result in a messages.mo file.
