git clone git://projects.archlinux.org/pacman.git pacman
This document is here to guide you in helping translate pacman messages, libalpm messages, and the manpages for the entire pacman package.
A quick note- the gettext website is a very useful guide to read before embarking on translation work, as it describes many of the commands in more detail than I will here: http://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/manual/html_node/gettext.html
In addition, this site presents a small tutorial that I found useful: http://oriya.sarovar.org/docs/gettext/
There are two separate message catalogs in pacman- one for the backend (libalpm) and one for the frontend (pacman and scripts). These correspond to the lib/libalpm/po and po directories in the pacman source, respectively.
Translation message files are a specially formatted text file containing the original message and the corresponding translation. These po files can then either be hand edited, or modified with a tool such as poedit, gtranslator or kbabel. Using a translation tool tends to make the job easier.
See the Notes section for additional hints on translating.
A week or two before each release, the codebase will go into a string freeze and an email will be sent by the translation lieutenant to the pacman-dev mailing list asking for translations. This email will have a prefix of [translation] for anyone looking to set up an email filter.
At this time, the .po language files will be made available at a URL specified in the email. Each language will have two files available (backend and frontend). Translators interested in helping are encouraged to send a follow-up message to the mailing list stating exactly what they intend to translate so efforts are not duplicated on the same language.
Once a translator has completed the translation (OR realizes they do not have time to finish), please email the .po files back to the list with a subject such as [translation] Updated German translation. At this point, the translation lieutenant will gather the translations together for inclusion in the upcoming release.
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Note
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Please email your translations back to the list as soon as possible- this will give other speakers of your language time to review your translations and update them as necessary. |
For those familiar with GIT, you may wish to follow the procedure outlined below as another alternative.
If you have more advanced needs you will have to get a copy of the pacman repository.
git clone git://projects.archlinux.org/pacman.git pacman
Next, you will need to run ./autogen.sh and ./configure in the base directory to generate the correct Makefiles. At this point, all necessary make targets will be generated and we can begin updating the translation files.
We need to first update the main message catalog file. Navigate into either the lib/libalpm/po or po directory depending on which translation you wish to work on first, and execute the following command. If you are working in the po/ tree, replace libalpm.pot with pacman.pot:
make libalpm.pot-update
Next, update your specific language's translation file:
make <po file>-update
At this point, you can do the translation. To submit your changes, either email the new .po file to the mailing-list with [translation] in the subject, or submit a GIT-formatted patch (please do not include any .pot file changes).
As a shortcut, all translation files (including .pot files) can be updated with the following command:
make update-po
Making a new language is not too hard, but be sure to follow all the steps. You will have to do the following steps in both the lib/libalpm/po/ and po/ directories, substituting where appropriate. First, edit the LINGUAS file and add your new language code at the bottom. Next, run the following command, substituting libalpm.pot or pacman.pot for potfile depending on which directory you are currently working in:
msginit -l <lang code> -o <lang code>.po -i <potfile>
You can then also add your language code to the end of the LINGUAS file located in each po directory.
Look at the current message files for more guidance if necessary. Once you create the new language file, you may need to slightly modify the headers; try to make them look similar to the other .po file headers. In addition, for all new translations we would strongly recommend using UTF-8 encoding.
msgid and msgstr variables can be on as many lines as necessary. Line breaks are ignored- if you need a literal line break, use an \n in your string. The following two translations are equivalent:
msgstr "This is a test translation"
msgstr "" "This is a test translation"
If you want to test the translation (for example, the frontend one):
rm *.gmo stamp-po make cp <lang code>.gmo /usr/share/locale/<lang code>/LC_MESSAGES/pacman.mo
There are currently no efforts underway to include translated manpages in the pacman codebase. However, this is not to say translations are unwelcome. If someone has experience with i18n manpages and how to best include them with our source, please contact the pacman-dev mailing list at pacman-dev@archlinux.org.
Some community efforts have been made to translate manpages, and these can be found in the AUR (Arch User Repository). Please check there first before undergoing a translation effort to ensure you are not duplicating efforts.