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+<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"><html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" /><title>57.1. For the Translator</title><link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="stylesheet.css" /><link rev="made" href="pgsql-docs@lists.postgresql.org" /><meta name="generator" content="DocBook XSL Stylesheets Vsnapshot" /><link rel="prev" href="nls.html" title="Chapter 57. Native Language Support" /><link rel="next" href="nls-programmer.html" title="57.2. For the Programmer" /></head><body id="docContent" class="container-fluid col-10"><div class="navheader"><table width="100%" summary="Navigation header"><tr><th colspan="5" align="center">57.1. For the Translator</th></tr><tr><td width="10%" align="left"><a accesskey="p" href="nls.html" title="Chapter 57. Native Language Support">Prev</a> </td><td width="10%" align="left"><a accesskey="u" href="nls.html" title="Chapter 57. Native Language Support">Up</a></td><th width="60%" align="center">Chapter 57. Native Language Support</th><td width="10%" align="right"><a accesskey="h" href="index.html" title="PostgreSQL 16.2 Documentation">Home</a></td><td width="10%" align="right"> <a accesskey="n" href="nls-programmer.html" title="57.2. For the Programmer">Next</a></td></tr></table><hr /></div><div class="sect1" id="NLS-TRANSLATOR"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both">57.1. For the Translator <a href="#NLS-TRANSLATOR" class="id_link">#</a></h2></div></div></div><div class="toc"><dl class="toc"><dt><span class="sect2"><a href="nls-translator.html#NLS-TRANSLATOR-REQUIREMENTS">57.1.1. Requirements</a></span></dt><dt><span class="sect2"><a href="nls-translator.html#NLS-TRANSLATOR-CONCEPTS">57.1.2. Concepts</a></span></dt><dt><span class="sect2"><a href="nls-translator.html#NLS-TRANSLATOR-MESSAGE-CATALOGS">57.1.3. Creating and Maintaining Message Catalogs</a></span></dt><dt><span class="sect2"><a href="nls-translator.html#NLS-TRANSLATOR-EDITING-PO">57.1.4. Editing the PO Files</a></span></dt></dl></div><p>
+ <span class="productname">PostgreSQL</span>
+ programs (server and client) can issue their messages in
+ your favorite language — if the messages have been translated.
+ Creating and maintaining translated message sets needs the help of
+ people who speak their own language well and want to contribute to
+ the <span class="productname">PostgreSQL</span> effort. You do not have to be a
+ programmer at all
+ to do this. This section explains how to help.
+ </p><div class="sect2" id="NLS-TRANSLATOR-REQUIREMENTS"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h3 class="title">57.1.1. Requirements <a href="#NLS-TRANSLATOR-REQUIREMENTS" class="id_link">#</a></h3></div></div></div><p>
+ We won't judge your language skills — this section is about
+ software tools. Theoretically, you only need a text editor. But
+ this is only in the unlikely event that you do not want to try out
+ your translated messages. When you configure your source tree, be
+ sure to use the <code class="option">--enable-nls</code> option. This will
+ also check for the <span class="application">libintl</span> library and the
+ <code class="filename">msgfmt</code> program, which all end users will need
+ anyway. To try out your work, follow the applicable portions of
+ the installation instructions.
+ </p><p>
+ If you want to start a new translation effort or want to do a
+ message catalog merge (described later), you will need the
+ programs <code class="filename">xgettext</code> and
+ <code class="filename">msgmerge</code>, respectively, in a GNU-compatible
+ implementation. Later, we will try to arrange it so that if you
+ use a packaged source distribution, you won't need
+ <code class="filename">xgettext</code>. (If working from Git, you will still need
+ it.) <span class="application">GNU Gettext 0.10.36</span> or later is currently recommended.
+ </p><p>
+ Your local gettext implementation should come with its own
+ documentation. Some of that is probably duplicated in what
+ follows, but for additional details you should look there.
+ </p></div><div class="sect2" id="NLS-TRANSLATOR-CONCEPTS"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h3 class="title">57.1.2. Concepts <a href="#NLS-TRANSLATOR-CONCEPTS" class="id_link">#</a></h3></div></div></div><p>
+ The pairs of original (English) messages and their (possibly)
+ translated equivalents are kept in <em class="firstterm">message
+ catalogs</em>, one for each program (although related
+ programs can share a message catalog) and for each target
+ language. There are two file formats for message catalogs: The
+ first is the <span class="quote">“<span class="quote">PO</span>”</span> file (for Portable Object), which
+ is a plain text file with special syntax that translators edit.
+ The second is the <span class="quote">“<span class="quote">MO</span>”</span> file (for Machine Object),
+ which is a binary file generated from the respective PO file and
+ is used while the internationalized program is run. Translators
+ do not deal with MO files; in fact hardly anyone does.
+ </p><p>
+ The extension of the message catalog file is to no surprise either
+ <code class="filename">.po</code> or <code class="filename">.mo</code>. The base
+ name is either the name of the program it accompanies, or the
+ language the file is for, depending on the situation. This is a
+ bit confusing. Examples are <code class="filename">psql.po</code> (PO file
+ for psql) or <code class="filename">fr.mo</code> (MO file in French).
+ </p><p>
+ The file format of the PO files is illustrated here:
+</p><pre class="programlisting">
+# comment
+
+msgid "original string"
+msgstr "translated string"
+
+msgid "more original"
+msgstr "another translated"
+"string can be broken up like this"
+
+...
+</pre><p>
+ The msgid lines are extracted from the program source. (They need not
+ be, but this is the most common way.) The msgstr lines are
+ initially empty and are filled in with useful strings by the
+ translator. The strings can contain C-style escape characters and
+ can be continued across lines as illustrated. (The next line must
+ start at the beginning of the line.)
+ </p><p>
+ The # character introduces a comment. If whitespace immediately
+ follows the # character, then this is a comment maintained by the
+ translator. There can also be automatic comments, which have a
+ non-whitespace character immediately following the #. These are
+ maintained by the various tools that operate on the PO files and
+ are intended to aid the translator.
+</p><pre class="programlisting">
+#. automatic comment
+#: filename.c:1023
+#, flags, flags
+</pre><p>
+ The #. style comments are extracted from the source file where the
+ message is used. Possibly the programmer has inserted information
+ for the translator, such as about expected alignment. The #:
+ comments indicate the exact locations where the message is used
+ in the source. The translator need not look at the program
+ source, but can if there is doubt about the correct
+ translation. The #, comments contain flags that describe the
+ message in some way. There are currently two flags:
+ <code class="literal">fuzzy</code> is set if the message has possibly been
+ outdated because of changes in the program source. The translator
+ can then verify this and possibly remove the fuzzy flag. Note
+ that fuzzy messages are not made available to the end user. The
+ other flag is <code class="literal">c-format</code>, which indicates that
+ the message is a <code class="function">printf</code>-style format
+ template. This means that the translation should also be a format
+ string with the same number and type of placeholders. There are
+ tools that can verify this, which key off the c-format flag.
+ </p></div><div class="sect2" id="NLS-TRANSLATOR-MESSAGE-CATALOGS"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h3 class="title">57.1.3. Creating and Maintaining Message Catalogs <a href="#NLS-TRANSLATOR-MESSAGE-CATALOGS" class="id_link">#</a></h3></div></div></div><p>
+ OK, so how does one create a <span class="quote">“<span class="quote">blank</span>”</span> message
+ catalog? First, go into the directory that contains the program
+ whose messages you want to translate. If there is a file
+ <code class="filename">nls.mk</code>, then this program has been prepared
+ for translation.
+ </p><p>
+ If there are already some <code class="filename">.po</code> files, then
+ someone has already done some translation work. The files are
+ named <code class="filename"><em class="replaceable"><code>language</code></em>.po</code>,
+ where <em class="replaceable"><code>language</code></em> is the
+ <a class="ulink" href="https://www.loc.gov/standards/iso639-2/php/English_list.php" target="_top">
+ ISO 639-1 two-letter language code (in lower case)</a>, e.g.,
+ <code class="filename">fr.po</code> for French. If there is really a need
+ for more than one translation effort per language then the files
+ can also be named
+ <code class="filename"><em class="replaceable"><code>language</code></em>_<em class="replaceable"><code>region</code></em>.po</code>
+ where <em class="replaceable"><code>region</code></em> is the
+ <a class="ulink" href="https://www.iso.org/iso-3166-country-codes.html" target="_top">
+ ISO 3166-1 two-letter country code (in upper case)</a>,
+ e.g.,
+ <code class="filename">pt_BR.po</code> for Portuguese in Brazil. If you
+ find the language you wanted you can just start working on that
+ file.
+ </p><p>
+ If you need to start a new translation effort, then first run the
+ command:
+</p><pre class="programlisting">
+make init-po
+</pre><p>
+ This will create a file
+ <code class="filename"><em class="replaceable"><code>progname</code></em>.pot</code>.
+ (<code class="filename">.pot</code> to distinguish it from PO files that
+ are <span class="quote">“<span class="quote">in production</span>”</span>. The <code class="literal">T</code> stands for
+ <span class="quote">“<span class="quote">template</span>”</span>.)
+ Copy this file to
+ <code class="filename"><em class="replaceable"><code>language</code></em>.po</code> and
+ edit it. To make it known that the new language is available,
+ also edit the file <code class="filename">po/LINGUAS</code> and add the
+ language (or language and country) code next to languages already listed,
+ like:
+</p><pre class="programlisting">
+de fr
+</pre><p>
+ (Other languages can appear, of course.)
+ </p><p>
+ As the underlying program or library changes, messages might be
+ changed or added by the programmers. In this case you do not need
+ to start from scratch. Instead, run the command:
+</p><pre class="programlisting">
+make update-po
+</pre><p>
+ which will create a new blank message catalog file (the pot file
+ you started with) and will merge it with the existing PO files.
+ If the merge algorithm is not sure about a particular message it
+ marks it <span class="quote">“<span class="quote">fuzzy</span>”</span> as explained above. The new PO file
+ is saved with a <code class="filename">.po.new</code> extension.
+ </p></div><div class="sect2" id="NLS-TRANSLATOR-EDITING-PO"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h3 class="title">57.1.4. Editing the PO Files <a href="#NLS-TRANSLATOR-EDITING-PO" class="id_link">#</a></h3></div></div></div><p>
+ The PO files can be edited with a regular text editor. There are also
+ several specialized editors for PO files which can help the process with
+ translation-specific features.
+ There is (unsurprisingly) a PO mode for Emacs, which can be quite
+ useful.
+ </p><p>
+ The translator should only change the area between the quotes after
+ the msgstr directive, add comments, and alter the fuzzy flag.
+ </p><p>
+ The PO files need not be completely filled in. The software will
+ automatically fall back to the original string if no translation
+ (or an empty translation) is available. It is no problem to
+ submit incomplete translations for inclusions in the source tree;
+ that gives room for other people to pick up your work. However,
+ you are encouraged to give priority to removing fuzzy entries
+ after doing a merge. Remember that fuzzy entries will not be
+ installed; they only serve as reference for what might be the right
+ translation.
+ </p><p>
+ Here are some things to keep in mind while editing the
+ translations:
+ </p><div class="itemizedlist"><ul class="itemizedlist" style="list-style-type: disc; "><li class="listitem"><p>
+ Make sure that if the original ends with a newline, the
+ translation does, too. Similarly for tabs, etc.
+ </p></li><li class="listitem"><p>
+ If the original is a <code class="function">printf</code> format string, the translation
+ also needs to be. The translation also needs to have the same
+ format specifiers in the same order. Sometimes the natural
+ rules of the language make this impossible or at least awkward.
+ In that case you can modify the format specifiers like this:
+</p><pre class="programlisting">
+msgstr "Die Datei %2$s hat %1$u Zeichen."
+</pre><p>
+ Then the first placeholder will actually use the second
+ argument from the list. The
+ <code class="literal"><em class="replaceable"><code>digits</code></em>$</code> needs to
+ follow the % immediately, before any other format manipulators.
+ (This feature really exists in the <code class="function">printf</code>
+ family of functions. You might not have heard of it before because
+ there is little use for it outside of message
+ internationalization.)
+ </p></li><li class="listitem"><p>
+ If the original string contains a linguistic mistake, report
+ that (or fix it yourself in the program source) and translate
+ normally. The corrected string can be merged in when the
+ program sources have been updated. If the original string
+ contains a factual mistake, report that (or fix it yourself)
+ and do not translate it. Instead, you can mark the string with
+ a comment in the PO file.
+ </p></li><li class="listitem"><p>
+ Maintain the style and tone of the original string.
+ Specifically, messages that are not sentences (<code class="literal">cannot
+ open file %s</code>) should probably not start with a
+ capital letter (if your language distinguishes letter case) or
+ end with a period (if your language uses punctuation marks).
+ It might help to read <a class="xref" href="error-style-guide.html" title="56.3. Error Message Style Guide">Section 56.3</a>.
+ </p></li><li class="listitem"><p>
+ If you don't know what a message means, or if it is ambiguous,
+ ask on the developers' mailing list. Chances are that English
+ speaking end users might also not understand it or find it
+ ambiguous, so it's best to improve the message.
+ </p></li></ul></div><p>
+ </p></div></div><div class="navfooter"><hr /><table width="100%" summary="Navigation footer"><tr><td width="40%" align="left"><a accesskey="p" href="nls.html" title="Chapter 57. Native Language Support">Prev</a> </td><td width="20%" align="center"><a accesskey="u" href="nls.html" title="Chapter 57. Native Language Support">Up</a></td><td width="40%" align="right"> <a accesskey="n" href="nls-programmer.html" title="57.2. For the Programmer">Next</a></td></tr><tr><td width="40%" align="left" valign="top">Chapter 57. Native Language Support </td><td width="20%" align="center"><a accesskey="h" href="index.html" title="PostgreSQL 16.2 Documentation">Home</a></td><td width="40%" align="right" valign="top"> 57.2. For the Programmer</td></tr></table></div></body></html> \ No newline at end of file