Translations

Updating the translations

String Freeze

Before making a release, it’s customary to call a “string freeze” (usually at least a week before). After this, there must be no changes to translatable strings in the code. (the strings look like _("text") or _N("text"))

This gives the translators time to catch up with the code changes.

Make the announcement to the Translation Team:

Update the Translations

This must be done twice: just before the String Freeze; just before the Release.

Repos needed:

Tasks:

  • stats (before)
  • git rebase
  • po/POTFILES.in
  • update-po
  • stats (after)
  • git merge
  • re-create [translate]

Stats (before)

Run this script before and after the updates as a quick check to see that everything went well.

../management/translate/stats.sh

You’ll see something like:

en_GB:	1404 translated
pt_BR:	1359 translated, 13 fuzzy, 32 untranslated
lt:	1359 translated, 13 fuzzy, 32 untranslated
zh_CN:	1351 translated, 21 fuzzy, 32 untranslated
de:	1335 translated, 33 fuzzy, 36 untranslated
...

Git Rebase

Rebase the existing translate branch onto main.

git rebase --interactive main

po/POTFILES.in

This file contains a list of all the source files that contain translatable strings. For simplicity, it’s a list of all the main source (excluding 3rd-party and auto-generated code).

Check that it’s up-to-date. This command may help:

(echo ./opcodes.h; find . -type f -name '*.c') | \
    grep -v -e "test/" -e jimsh0 -e makedoc -e conststrings -e git_ver | \
    sed 's/^..//' | \
    LANG=C sort -f \
    > po/POTFILES.in

update-po

This Makefile target reads all the source files looking for translatable strings. It will update the ‘po’ files with any new/deleted strings and update the source file locations in the #: comments.

./configure
make update-po

Next, clean out any dead translations (#~).

for i in po/*.po; do
  msgattrib --no-wrap --no-obsolete "$i" | sponge "$i"
done

(sponge can be found in the moreutils package)

Finally, edit po/en_GB.po to bring it up to 100%. Fill in any missing translations, or fuzzy strings.

:spiral_notepad: Note: When making a release, edit all the ‘po’ files to update the ‘Project-Id-Version:’ header to the new version string.

:heart: Creating a script to do this, or better still improving the Makefile would be helpful.

Stats (after)

../management/translate/stats.sh

Check the results against the earlier output. Most languages will have changed by a few numbers, as translatable strings change, or as translators do their work.

git merge

The update work is done. Now it’s time to commit the changes.

git commit --all --message "sync translations"
git checkout main
git merge --no-ff translate --message "update translations"

main may now be pushed to GitHub.

Re-create [translate]

Finally, we need to create a fresh [translate] branch for new work to begin.

git branch --delete --force translate
../management/travis/translate-install.sh
git push --force --set-upstream origin translate

Checks

Check Travis was successful:

Check web push was successful:

Make the announcement to the Translation Team:

Credits

The ‘Translation’ section for the Release Notes is presented as a league table. List all the languages that have been updated since the previous release.

  • 100% Lithuanian
  • 95% German
  • 95% Finnish
  • 91% Polish
  • 73% Dutch

For GitHub and the Website, this list can be made prettier with national flags. They both support :denmark: style emojis.

:spiral_notepad: Note: These languages don’t have emojos: Basque, Catalan, Esperanto, Galician

Flag Language Emoji Code
- Basque - eu
:bulgaria: Bulgarian :bulgaria: bg
- Catalan - ca
:cn: Chinese (Simplified) :cn: zh_CN
:taiwan: Chinese (Traditional) :taiwan: zh_TW
:czech_republic: Czech :czech_republic: cs
:denmark: Danish :denmark: da
:netherlands: Dutch :netherlands: nl
:uk: English (British) :uk: en_GB
- Esperanto - eo
:estonia: Estonian :estonia: et
:finland: Finnish :finland: fi
:fr: French :fr: fr
- Galician - gl
:de: German :de: de
:greece: Greek :greece: el
:hungary: Hungarian :hungary: hu
:indonesia: Indonesian :indonesia: id
:ireland: Irish :ireland: ga
:it: Italian :it: it
:jp: Japanese :jp: ja
:kr: Korean :kr: ko
:lithuania: Lithuanian :lithuania: lt
:poland: Polish :poland: pl
:brazil: Portuguese (Brazil) :brazil: pt_BR
:ru: Russian :ru: ru
:slovakia: Slovak :slovakia: sk
:es: Spanish :es: es
:sweden: Swedish :sweden: sv
:tr: Turkish :tr: tr
:ukraine: Ukrainian :ukraine: uk

More info

For more info read: Deployment using Travis

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