General localisation guidelines

Introduction

• Read through Translate.org.za's localization guide to get started. Refer to this documentation whenever you get stuck somewhere. You definitely need to read about these topics before you start:
  • Variables
  • Plurals
• Changing the locale of your operating system.
  • Glibc locales (for Linux)
    • Check for your locale in the list of supported locales
    • Check Glibc locales guide if you want to add a new locale or fix existing ones.
  • Windows
    • Check the list of supported locales
    • Adding new locales (Link/Instructions needed here)

Terminology

• to the localize-software team mailing list to discuss the terminology sources you will be using for your project:
  • If your team worked on Glossmaster, this should be the best starting point
  • If you have no terminology available for you language, inform the rest of the team, and someone might be able to point you to where you can find terminology for your language. The support team can put a template terminology file on Pootle for your language.
• How to add terms to the existing terminology list?
  • If the terminology project in Pootle has an untranslated term, you can translate it like with any other translation project. Just search for the term and add the translation. Be sure to discuss this with your team.
  • To add a term that is not currently in the terminology project, contact the support team for help.
  • Instructions needed here
  • If you unsure of a term, do not add it
• Verb-noun ambiguities? (Instructions needed here)

Translation

Online using Pootle

• Get a Pootle account
• Check the Pootle user guide.
• Pootle can provide terminology help while translating online.

Offline

• Download the .po or .pot files for the open source applications you will be localizing from the Pootle server.
• Translate using any CAT tool you are familiar with, but we recommend that you use Virtaal (available for Windows and Linux users) or Poedit (for Mac OS X users).
• Check the Virtaal user guide.
• Integrate terminology, how? Instructions needed here
• You will need to upload your translations to the Pootle server at the project that you downloaded it from.
  • Go to the project's page on pootle (say, Firefox 3.6) and click on your language link.
  • Then you'll find an "upload file" block in the upper right corner of the page.
  • Click on browse button and select files from your computer and upload it.
  • Files can be individual PO files or a ZIP containing collection of PO files.

Translating from a different source language

Pootle
If members of your team has better skills in another language than English (like French or Arabic), Pootle can display a translation while translating. More information available here

Virtaal
Virtaal doesn't currently support using different source language, but you can get around this:

• Download the complete French translation from Pootle, and the PO files for your language.
• Swap the English-based PO files to French-based PO files using the Translate Toolkit tool "poswap".
• Then translate the French-based PO files offline in Virtaal.
• After finishing the translation, you can swap back the files to English using "poswap" with the --reverse option.

Review

• Can be done after uploading your translation back on Pootle server.
• Pootle's Quality Checks
  • Read about Pootle's translation checks
  • Some tests are crucial (some translation mistakes can break Firefox). It is very important that you perform all these tests. They are:
    • accelerators: Accelerators are the underlined letters in application's user interface, and are used to access action by keyboard shortcuts. In Firefox accelerators are marked by '&', as in "&File", and the translation must contain an '&' as well. You can but the '&' before any letter in your translation, just make sure it doesn't conflict with other items and is easily accessible in the keyboard.
    • printf
    • variables
    • xmltags

(other tests are important, but more cosmetic)

• You can use Pootle's search feature (in the upper right side of the page) to search for specific string, by clicking on the arrow next to search field you can choose to search the source text or the target (translation) text. Pootle doesn't provide a search & replace functionality, though.

Testing

• Install the software and go through all menus, dialogues, installer, etc.
• Reach out to the community for wider testing and feedback

Resources

• You can download and install keyboards and fonts for your language from here.
• to the localise-software team should you have any special needs.

How to get help

• to the localise-software team mailing list.