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:

https://github.com/orgs/neomutt/teams/translators

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.

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

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:

Timestamp at bottom of https://neomutt.org/translate

Make the announcement to the Translation Team:

https://github.com/orgs/neomutt/teams/translators

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.

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

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