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How to translate QGIS

Title: HowTo Translate QGIS
QGIS Version(s): All
Category: Internationalisation

QGIS translation (with some general notes)

by Ľuboš Balážovič

Content

Why to translate?

Translation makes a program easy to use for people who do not understand English (or another language which is the application originally written). For most people who understand English is also more comfortable to use program interface which communicates in their native language. In case of GIS software, another reason is that localization could help people who are new to GIS to introduce with GIS and its terms (terms in native language are often more intuitive than in English where looks very general).

How to translate?

What do you need...

working QGIS application (it is good if it is full compiled with SPIT, Georeferencer plugin, GRASS plugin, Postgres/PostGIS support)
QT Linguist (available also for WIN32) or KBabel or VIM :-) for .ts editing
good knowledge of GIS terms in language which you are translating to. It is recommended to discuss terms with some books about GIS in targeted language.
sometimes is useful to understand C++ a little

Step by step...

Choose some existing .ts file or try to generate some by yourself (existing .ts files are located in i18n directory)
Open .ts file in QT Linguist
Make translation of phrases (QT Linguist is intuitive and easy to use so no additional howto is needed) Don't translate word by word. Try to let your phrases live in the context. Remember that your translation should be more understandable for people who speak your language, so don't make it confusing and unclear!!! If you are not sure mark your translation as fuzzy. You can change it later, and you will find it easier. On the left side of screen it is shown in which module the phrase is used in. That can help you to find out context.
If you are new to translations, it is useful to subscribe to some translation team mailing-list (especially people in localization team for GNU project are very kind and shall help you). Translation of some terms are convention and it is recomended to use them and not to invent some new.

Other very good sources for translation might be documents from opengis.org where are defined all GIS terms. Your translation should conform to this definitions.
Save you .ts file as qgis_xx_XX.ts where xx is code of language and XX is code of country which is it used in (some languages varies in different countries - for example pt_PT and pt_BR - Portuguese in Portugal ins't the same as Portuguese in Brazil)
Use File->Release to save your file in .qm format. As you put this file into $QGIS/i18n directory it is ready for use. Now when you run qgis and your LC variables are set properly (according to you language), you should have menus in your language.
Check your translation (the best way how to check is to work with localized qgis as much as possible). Especially check if it pass issues from topic "Why to translate?" (if your translation help people or make them confusing) In this step you can also use some spellchecking tool with appropriate dictionary for your .ts file (programs for spellchecking: aspell, ispell - for more information see homepages of these projects).
Post your .ts file to someone from QGIS developers team

What to do when you find some untranslatable string?

untranslatable string means - some phrase in menu which doesn't appear in you .ts file (in Linguist). This is probably bug, so report it to bug tracker or discuss in mailing-list.

Documentation

When you finish the application translation it is good idea to translate also documentation because translation of application and the original documentation is obviously incompatible (it is possible to make a good translation and also good linked with original documentation). It is written in LaTeX so it recommended to have some LaTeX skills (there is good documentation to LaTeX in ???, so it wouldn't be problem even if you are novice to LaTeX). Translated file should be save with _xx (code of language) or _xx_XX before TeX postfix }for example introduction_sk.tex. Additional info of LaTex and its language specials settings are discussed in LaTeX documentation.

What to not translate?

names of contributors :-)

For discussion

link to GNU GPL - it available also in other languages in different links, question is if it should point only to English original
logical operators in SQLbuilder
GRASS terms (such as LOCATION)

Translation and the source code

How does it work

All displayed strings in source code are called via tr("string") function, which returns translated string if available. Language depends on command line option or on LC variables setting.

Notes for programmers

Strings (phrases) should be clear and unequivocal. It is good to avoid to some special forms of phrases. For example in (at least) Slavic languages there is different plural form used for 2-4 objects and different for 5 and more objects. This causes problems if in program is used phrase "%1 meters" where %1 is undefined number*. In such cases it is better use only symbol for meters (m) which is universal form singular and all plural forms (and it is understandable for everyone, even children in schools knows what does m mean). Analogicaly which mm, cm, ft (? - not so clear) etc.

* - in gettext there is some handling of plural forms, in QT I think not...

Discussion

There were some missing tr in pluginmanager.cpp. Descriptions and plugin names also can't be translated, however it's translated in plugins themeselves.

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