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TranslateSolfege

Use http://translationproject.org

Solfege uses the Translation Project to handle translations. You should visit their web site and join your language team if you want to translate solfege to you own language.

About this page

On this page we will collect all the information people need to be able to translate Solfege. Existing translators are very welcome to help improve this documentation to help new translators. Documentation about the Translation Project are available on their site.

If you have questions about translating Solfege, you can ask on the mailing list. Then someone (you??) should add the answers given to this page.

You can view the status of the existing translations on http://translationproject.org/domain/solfege.html

Should I translate the stable or unstable branch?

Wrong question! You should translate whatever is the current branch on the Translation Project. We do this to make life easier and to avoid people doing unnecessary translation work.

Which files should I translate?

Existing translations are available on http://translationproject.org/domain/solfege.html The .pot file to use to start a new translation is also available there. But then you should first check with the language teams how to start translating.

The user manual will soon also be available from the Translation Project.

PO files

The po-files are plain-text files, so you can edit them in any text editor. But my advise is to edit them using emacs or any program designed to edit these files. This can save you some trouble because these programs prevent you from the most annoying syntax errors. Please avoid gtranslator, at least version 1.1.6-1 from debian, as it corrupts obsolete entries.

Ambiguous strings

When you translate the .po file, you will notice some msgid strings that look a little strange, for example "interval|m9". This is because very short strings can be ambiguous. So some times in the source code I might write _("interval|m9") and some other place _("chord|m9"). Both strings will be displayed as "m9" when you run with english messages. But for some languages the strings might be translated differently. In norwegian "chord|m9" is translated to "m9" and "interval|m9" is translated to "l9". Notice that you should not include the word before "|" in the translated message.

Strings to take special care of

The string SOLFEGETRANSLATORS should name the people that have translated Solfege to that particular language.

One entry starting with "Because not all documents..." contain the uppercase word "LANGUAGE". Here you must replace "LANGUAGE" with the language you are translating to.

The two strings "notenameformat|%(notename)s" and "notenameformat|%(notename)s%(oct)s" describe how notenames are displayed to the user. Add a translation of this string if you want to change any thing.

%(unotename)s

Untranslated notename

%(notename)s

Translated notename

%(notename2)s

Translated notename. Capitalize the first letter in notename if the note is (in solfege internal format) c, or lower.

%(oct)s

Zero or more comma (",") or apostrop ("'") chars that tell the octave.

%(suboct)s

If the tone is b, or lower, this will return a number (1 for "c,", 2 for "c,,", 3 for "c,,," etc.) that will be displayed as small numbers below the line.

%(supoct)s

If the tone is c' or higher, this will return a number (1 for "c'", 2 for "c", 3 for "c'" etc.) that will be displayed as small numbers above the line.

More about lesson files

Lesson files will also be translated using the gettext tools. This mean that messages from lesson files will be translated in the .po file together with the rest of the program. So translators don't even have to know that there exists anything called lesson files.

Lesson file writers should mark strings for translation like this:

 name = _("Major")

If you write lesson files that will not be included in the official release, you can enter the translations directly into the lesson file:

 name = "Major"
 name[no] = "Dur"
 name[fr] = "Majeur"

Note that the translation in name[LANG] will be used instead of name=_("string...") if LANG is your current locale and both are present.

The user manual

Benno Schulenberg summarised the long description below in this sentence:

If you care for a longer description:

The Solfege User Manual is written in DocBook XML.The xml2po tool is used to create the .po file. Most of the xml elements are filtered out before the text reach the translators, but some are still left.

The content of these two elements should be translated:

• <empasis>TRANSLATE THIS</emphasis>
• <guibutton>BUTTONLABEL</guibutton> Translate the text BUTTONLABEL the same way the button we are describing is translate in the program.

Don't translate anything of the UPPERCASE strings here:

 <xref linkend="DONT TRANSLATE THIS"/>
 <userinput>DONT TRANSLATE THIS</userinput>
 <literal>DONT TRANSLATE THIS</literal>
 <filename>/SOME/FILE/NAME/filename>
 <email>EMAIL@ADDRESS.COM</email>

In the <ulink> element you should translate the linked text (uppercase in the example below), but not the url:

 <ulink url="http://example.com">TRANSLATABLE TEXT</ulink>

The string "&app; &appversion; User Manual" will be expanded to "GNU Solfege x.y.z User Manual" where "x.y.z" is the version of the program. You should translate the words "User Manual", and it is ok to change the order and placement in the string of &app and &appversion

 msgid "&app; &appversion; User Manual"
 msgstr ""

Keyboard shortuts

As we speak, keyboard shortcuts in solfege is a little random, and we need to fix things in the C locale. So you can leave keycombo and keycap elements untranslated until this notice is removed from this description.

The <keycombo> and <keycap> elements are used to describe keyboard sequences that can be used instead of clicking with the mouse. Below is two examples. The first one will be renderedas Alt-l, the second one as Backspace.

 <keycombo><keycap>Alt</keycap><keycap>l</keycap></keycombo>
 <keycap>Backspace</keycap>

It might seem cumbersome to write this verbose, but this let us emphasise the visual display of the keys. For example can we use style sheets to make "Alt" and "l" be displayed on a image of a keyboard button.

Keyboard sequences are translated. You have to check in the program to see which keys are used in you language. Of course this means that the .po file for the solfege program itself has to be translated first.

MS Windows users

On windows, the best tool is poEdit http://www.poedit.net. Otherwise, use emacs if it is possible for you to install it. If not, any text editor should to.