Localizing Windows user interfaces
It is straightforward to translate the user interfaces with a free and sophisticated tool called PoEdit, that could be obtained from http://www.poedit.net/. Please also download a PO file which is contained in a zip file. Please contact the technical support first, as there might be a fellow citizen had begun the job.
When Open Contacts starts running, it will try to locate a language resource file "default.mo" in a sub-folder as illustrated below, if your computer is running Windows in German language.
Open Contacts will pick up translations from the MO file.
General Steps:
- Get a copy of a po file with empty translation, and save it to directory "\locale\YourLanguageID\LC_MESSAGES".
- Change the settings of the pofile, and update with your translation.
- Save the po file to create the mo file as well.
- Run Open Contacts to test the translation.
After opening the PO file with PoEdit, you might get a screen like this.
Input translations into the bottom-left box. By default, lines in blue represent texts not translated, and lines in white represent translated texts, and lines in yellow represent fuzzy translations.
After getting enough texts translated, you may press the Save button to save translations and generate the MO file that is saved in the same folder. To make Open Contacts know where to locate the MO file, you need to create a proper directory structure, as explained following.
In a screenshot above, directory "de" indicates that German translation is here. For Spanish translation, the folder name should be "es", or "es_PR". PR represents country Qatar. Thus, the directory name is language code, or language code plus country code connected with an underscore. For more details, please refer to ISO 639 language codes and ISO 3166 country codes.
To distribute the translation you made, you may compress it to a zip file including relative folder structures like "locale\de\LC_MESSAGES".
Note
Some segments of the original texts should not be translated. For example, if you see original texts like "%d record(s) added;", you should leave "%d" as it is. Another similar segment is "%s".
