Localization

kupfer is translated using gettext and it is managed in the build system using intltool. Translation messages are located in the po/ directory. The user’s guide is located in the help/ directory and it can also be translated, see its section.

Contents

To create a new translation

Go into the directory po

  1. Add the language code $LANG to the file LINGUAS

  2. Run intltool-update --pot, and copy untitled.pot to $LANG.po

  3. Edit and check the whole file header:

    • Write in yourself as author

    • Check plurals (copy from a language that you know uses the same number of plural forms, or look up in GNOME's translation pages.)

    • Replace everything written in CAPS

Fill in the charset used; Kupfer translations must use the UTF-8 encoding.

When the header is filled-in, go to To update or check an existing translation

To update or check an existing translation

Go to your Kupfer source directory.

Here we will call your language $LANG. You should use a two or four-letter code for your language instead of $LANG, for example "de" for German or "pt_BR" for Brazilian Portuguese.

Go to the translation directory po:

cd po/

To update and check the translation file, run:

intltool-update $LANG

Now check and edit $LANG.po. Search for all messages marked "fuzzy", and remove the word "fuzzy" from them when they are done.

Continue running intltool-update $LANG and check that you have 0 fuzzy and 0 untranslated, then you're finished.

This will also check consistency of the file, so that you know that all your syntax is correct.

To try the new translation

Make sure the translation is listed in po/LINGUAS.

To try it, you have to install kupfer with ./waf install, then you can run kupfer as normal.

Note

If you run ./kupfer-run from the source directory it won't find the installed translations unless you make a symlink called locale to the installed location (for example ~/.local/share/locale if install prefix was ~/.local):

$ ln -s ~/.local/share/locale

User’s Guide

Go to help/. The english-language original of the user’s guide is defined in the C/ directory. Use make $LANG inside help to update a language’s .po file. Currently, the best way to view the translated help page during development is to run the regular build and install, which puts the help pages under $PREFIX/help/$LANG/kupfer.