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This document describes how you can translate pal into other languages.

NOTE: Some parts of pal rely on other libraries already have different translations available. If pal isn't translated to your language, a few parts of it, such as the names of the months, will be translated.

If you have any questions about this document or if you find a mistake in it, please email the palcal-devel mailing list (for more information, see http://palcal.sourceforge.net/).

0) Create po/pal.pot by running "make pot" while in /src

1. Look for a file named "language_COUNTRY.po" in this directory, where "language" is the two character code for your language and "COUNTRY" is the two character code for your country. If you don't want to make a country specific translation, just use "language.po".

   1a) If this file does not exist, create it by copying "pal.pot" to

   "language_COUNTRY.po".

   1b) If the file already exists, run the command:

          msgmerge language_COUNTRY.po pal.pot > language_COUNTRY.po.NEW
          mv language_COUNTRY.po.NEW language_COUNTRY.po

       This command will merge any updated strings that need to be
       translated in pal.pot into language_COUNTRY.po.

2) Add translations for as many of the strings as possible. The

original strings are labeled "msgid". The string to be translated is labeled "msgstr". Duplicate the formatting strings (such as %s) in your translated strings. Try to duplicate any spacing in your translated strings as well.

3) If you didn't create a new language_COUNTRY.po file, also look for

translated strings that are marked "fuzzy". If the translation for a "fuzzy" string is good, remove the "fuzzy" label from it. If the translation is bad, fix it and remove the "fuzzy" label from it.

4) Update the header for the po file where appropriate:

4a) Remove the "fuzzy" label before the header. 4b) Update "PO-Revision-Date" with the date you edited the file. 4c) Update "Last-Translator" with your name and email address. 4d) Update "Language-Team" with:

          LANGUAGE => Full name of language for translation
          LL => Language code

4e) Update "Content-Type" with charset=UTF-8 4f) If it exists, replace this line:

          # Copyright (C) YEAR Scott Kuhl
       with
          # Copyright (C) CURRENT_YEAR YOUR NAME
       If the line does not exist, add a new copyright line under the
       copyright line that is already there.

5) CHECK your po file with this command and fix any problems:

msgfmt -c --statistics language_COUNTRY.po

6) TEST. You can test your translation by running the following

command as root (depending on your distribution, you might need to replace /usr with /usr/local in the commands below):

       mkdir -p /usr/share/locale/language_COUNTRY/LC_MESSAGES/
       msgfmt language_COUNTRY.po -o /usr/share/locale/language_COUNTRY/LC_MESSAGES/pal.mo

For both of the commands above, you will need to replace language_COUNTRY with your locale code. You do not need to run the first command if the directory already exists.

Then, you should be able to run "LC_ALL=language_COUNTRY pal" to test your translation.

7) SUBMIT. Run "gzip language_COUNTRY.po" and attach your

language_COUNTRY.po.gz file to an email to the palcal-devel mailing list (information about this mailing list can be found on pal's website, http://palcal.sourceforge.net/). Your translation will likely be added to the next release of pal.