Localization

[satoshijoh]

Dear Konstantin,

I think GoldenDict is the best open source application of its kind. Thank you for your great work.

I am personally Chinese/Japanese bilingual and I'm thinking of introducing GoldenDict to China/Japan.

I don't have much technical background so would you please write an brief introduction on how to make new translation to the user interface?

Looking forward to your reply.

Satoshi

[C2BlEv]

Satoshi-san,

You efforts could be a boon for the GD development effort. If the Japanese get a hold of it, then they could add the EPWING support (the format that we've discussed elsewhere on this forum; I understand the EB library can be used for this: http://www.sra.co.jp/people/m-kasahr/eb/).

I do not know how to translate the GD. Hopefully, the author will give more details. In the meantime, I will give you some links to a Russian localization that you can use as a start.

viewtopic.php?f=10&t=32&p=180
http://svn.berlios.de/wsvn/goldendict/t ... cale/ru.ts

Apparently, there are two main files that are responsible for localization: *.ts that later becomes *.qm. I've given a link to an example of the ts file above. I believe you should use the Qt Linguist program for translating programs in the Qt environment (GD is based on Qt). Don't forget that Qt must be 4.5.0 or later.

You can learn how to use Qt Linguist here:
http://doc.trolltech.com/4.5/linguist-manual.html

[ikm]

Satoshi,

It is all like C2BlEv said. The easiest way to start a new translation right now is to take the latest "ru.ts" file from SVN and just replace all Russian with Japanese/Chinese in Qt Linguist. Then "release" it (make .qm, in Linguist too), put the resulting file in place of the original, installed "ru.qm" and test. Once everything looks as expected, send me your .ts files for inclusion.

There should be a standalone Linguist installer for Windows somewhere on qt-apps.org. If you use linux, you can install it by the means of your package manager.

[satoshijoh]

Thank you both for the info, it has been really helpful.

Now I know how to create translation file, the QT linguist is quite straight forward. And here I have another question.

I checked out the version history of GD and found that it is updated pretty frequently. I'm wondering if I will have to make translation file from scratch every time GD is updated, or is it possible to simply translate only newly added entries based on my previous work?

I suggest maybe you can make the translation file in a sort of format that do not require compilation, say like csv? And if you could make it easier to integrate new translations through something like simple import/export, it would become even better.

You know I'm not that much of a technical person so maybe I didn't make myself clear, but anyway just some thoughts.

[C2BlEv]

No, you won't have to retranslate the whole thing each time there is a new cvs code commit from ikm. Sometimes there are new windows or dialog windows added. Only then you will have to translate new translation strings. You can always compare the files to see whether there are any changes from one version to the version.