The VideoLAN Forums

G'day everyone

In the locked thread above is this sentence: To start a new translation you can use rosetta's web interface or ask for your language's ".po" file and use programs like poEdit to edit it. Well, another program that you can use to translate VLC's files, is a Pootle server. Setting up a Pootle server on your own computer can be a little tricky, but don't worry, if anyone wants to use Pootle (or try it out) to do their translation of VLC, we can activate your language on our Pootle server:

http://pootle.locamotion.org/projects/vlc/

Some Pootle servers are very tightly integrated with the projects being translated, and there is sometimes very close cooperation between the Pootle guys and each project's developers... but in our case we simply provide the web-based interface, and leave it up to the translators to ensure that they follow the project's normal procedures (in this case, VLC).

VLC is a great program and I would like to see it translated into more languages. So over the next few weeks I'll be translating more of VLC into my own language, Afrikaans (I've also been in contact with the current Afrikaans language maintainer). I'll also encourage translators (especially professional translators) in other languages to participate in translating VLC into their languages.

The VLC language file is big... 30 000 words. But in many programs, it is possible to translate only a subset of the strings and the program still looks "almost fully translated" to most users. The same goes for VLC. If roughly 7000 strings are translated (the ones marked GUI and controls, mainly), the user interface of VLC looks almost fully translated. For this reason we've split the VLC POT file on our Pootle server so that translators can translate the GUI first (if they want to). Translators must just remember to put the PO file back together again before submitting it to the VLC people

I've done a few other things to help translators of VLC, but I'll post it as a reply to this.

Thanks for VLC, you guys... it is a great program, and translations of it will do a lot to promote minority languages.

Samuel

--
Samuel Murray samuel@translate.org.za
Decathlon, for volunteer opensource translations
http://translate.sourceforge.net/wiki/decathlon/

I just register the polish VLC translation into Pootle!

Thanks for any help and co-translating!

M.T

The VLC language file is big... 30 000 words. But in many programs, it is possible to translate only a subset of the strings and the program still looks "almost fully translated" to most users. The same goes for VLC. If roughly 7000 strings are translated (the ones marked GUI and controls, mainly), the user interface of VLC looks almost fully translated.

I've been telling translators using Pootle that they can't just submit a partial PO file to the VLC developers, but I've been wondering what the VLC developers might think of it if translators did submit a partial PO file. In other words, if a translator submits a PO file that contains only a subset of the strings. Would that be okay? I realise it may mean a little extra work for the developers (having to use the Gettext tools to merge the partial PO file with the full PO file), but it can't hurt to ask

I've done a few other things to help translators of VLC, but I'll post it as a reply to this.

Well, one of the things I found to be of value to translators is if they first translate a list of terms that occur frequently in the project. It helps standardise the translation somewhat, and translators can do a little bit of useful research in one sitting. I've created such a file for VLC, here:

http://translate.sourceforge.net/wiki/decathlon/vlc
(the fifth link from the top, it is named "VLC glossary for Pootle")
It contains the 100 most commonly used words in VLC.

Another thing I've found is that some translators who don't quite know how to use a search engine effectively might struggle to find good information about what they're translating. There is a useful feature in Google that allows you to create a mini search engine that indexes only very specific pages, and this is something I think translators should at least try out to see if they find it useful. Again, I've created one for VLC, here:

http://translate.sourceforge.net/wiki/decathlon/vlc
(the fourth link from the top, it is named "Customised Google search for VLC terminology")

I'm sure there are many ways one can make life easier for translators and also ensure a good translation at the end of the day. If you can think of other things that are easy to implement, I'd be happy to hear about it.

Thanks!
Samuel

The only developer able to answer the question about partial PO is xtophe, since he is the one managing the translations in VLC.

I've been telling translators using Pootle that they can't just submit a partial PO file to the VLC developers, but I've been wondering what the VLC developers might think of it if translators did submit a partial PO file. In other words, if a translator submits a PO file that contains only a subset of the strings. Would that be okay? I realise it may mean a little extra work for the developers (having to use the Gettext tools to merge the partial PO file with the full PO file), but it can't hurt to ask

I don't think it would be good for direct submission to mailing list.
But if it's sent to me (or feepk), it should be alright. I looked at your website where you explain how to use po2tmx and i should manage and write the usefull command line in a script/text file for future reference