Notes on the Free Translation Project
=====================================

This section contains the text that was, for a long time, distributed as a file named ABOUT-NLS.

 NOTE:  This documentation section is outdated.  It it included here for historical purposes only.

Free software is going international!  The Free Translation Project is a way to get maintainers of free software, translators, and users all together, so that free software will gradually become able to speak many languages.  A few packages already provide translations for their messages.

If you found this ABOUT-NLS file inside a distribution, you may assume that the distributed package does use GNU gettext internally, itself available at your nearest GNU archive site.  But you do not need to install GNU gettext prior to configuring, installing or using this package with messages translated.

Installers will find here some useful hints.  These notes also explain how users should proceed for getting the programs to use the available translations.  They tell how people wanting to contribute and work on translations can contact the appropriate team.

INSTALL Matters
---------------

Some packages are localizable when properly installed; the programs they contain can be made to speak your own native language. Most such packages use GNU gettext.  Other packages have their own ways to internationalization, predating GNU gettext.

By default, this package will be installed to allow translation of messages.  It will automatically detect whether the system already provides the GNU gettext functions.  Installers may use special options at configuration time for changing the default behaviour.  The command:

     ./configure --disable-nls

will totally disable translation of messages.

When you already have GNU gettext installed on your system and run configure without an option for your new package, configure will probably detect the previously built and installed libintl library and will decide to use it.  If not, you may have to to use the --with-libintl-prefix option to tell configure where to look for it.

Internationalized packages usually have many po/LL.po files, where LL gives an ISO 639 two-letter code identifying the language.  Unless translations have been forbidden at configure time by using the --disable-nls switch, all available translations are installed together with the package. However, the environment variable LINGUAS may be set, prior to configuration, to limit the installed set.  LINGUAS should then contain a space separated list of two-letter codes, stating which languages are allowed.

Using This Package
------------------

As a user, if your language has been installed for this package, you only have to set the LANG environment variable to the appropriate LL_CC combination.  If you happen to have the LC_ALL or some other LC_xxx environment variables set, you should unset them before setting LANG, otherwise the setting of LANG will not have the desired effect.  Here LL is an ISO 639 two-letter language code, and CC is an ISO 3166 two-letter country code.  For example, let's suppose that you speak German and live in Germany.  At the shell prompt, merely execute setenv LANG de_DE (in csh), export LANG; LANG=de_DE (in sh) or export LANG=de_DE (in bash).  This can be done from your .login or .profile file, once and for all.

You might think that the country code specification is redundant.  But in fact, some languages have dialects in different countries.  For example, de_AT is used for Austria, and pt_BR for Brazil.  The country code serves to distinguish the dialects.

The locale naming convention of LL_CC, with LL denoting the language and CC denoting the country, is the one use on systems based on GNU libc.  On other systems, some variations of this scheme are used, such as LL or LL_CC.ENCODING.  You can get the list of locales supported by your system for your language by running the command locale -a | grep '^LL'.

Not all programs have translations for all languages.  By default, an English message is shown in place of a nonexistent translation.  If you understand other languages, you can set up a priority list of languages. This is done through a different environment variable, called LANGUAGE.  GNU gettext gives preference to LANGUAGE over LANG for the purpose of message handling, but you still need to have LANG set to the primary language; this is required by other parts of the system libraries. For example, some Swedish users who would rather read translations in German than English for when Swedish is not available, set LANGUAGE to sv:de while leaving LANG to sv_SE.

Special advice for Norwegian users: The language code for Norwegian bokmål changed from no to nb recently (in 2003). During the transition period, while some message catalogs for this language are installed under nb and some older ones under no, it's recommended for Norwegian users to set LANGUAGE to nb:no so that both newer and older translations are used.

In the LANGUAGE environment variable, but not in the LANG environment variable, LL_CC combinations can be abbreviated as LL to denote the language's main dialect. For example, de is equivalent to de_DE (German as spoken in Germany), and pt to pt_PT (Portuguese as spoken in Portugal) in this context.

Translating Teams
-----------------

For the Free Translation Project to be a success, we need interested people who like their own language and write it well, and who are also able to synergize with other translators speaking the same language. Each translation team has its own mailing list.  The up-to-date list of teams can be found at the Free Translation Project's homepage, https://translationproject.org/, in the "Teams" area.

If you'd like to volunteer to work at translating messages, you should become a member of the translating team for your own language. The subscribing address is not the same as the list itself, it has -request appended.  For example, speakers of Swedish can send a message to sv-request@li.org, having this message body:

     subscribe

Keep in mind that team members are expected to participate actively in translations, or at solving translational difficulties, rather than merely lurking around.  If your team does not exist yet and you want to start one, or if you are unsure about what to do or how to get started, please write to coordinator@translationproject.org to reach the coordinator for all translator teams.

The English team is special.  It works at improving and uniformizing the terminology in use.  Proven linguistic skills are praised more than programming skills, here.

Available Packages
------------------

Languages are not equally supported in all packages.  The following matrix shows the current state of internationalization, as of June 2023.  The matrix shows, in regard of each package, for which languages PO files have been submitted to translation coordination, with a translation percentage of at least 50%.

     [file matrix.texi not included]

Some counters in the preceding matrix are higher than the number of visible blocks let us expect.  This is because a few extra PO files are used for implementing regional variants of languages, or language dialects.

For a PO file in the matrix above to be effective, the package to which it applies should also have been internationalized and distributed as such by its maintainer.  There might be an observable lag between the mere existence a PO file and its wide availability in a distribution.

If June 2023 seems to be old, you may fetch a more recent copy of this ABOUT-NLS file on most GNU archive sites.  The most up-to-date matrix with full percentage details can be found at https://translationproject.org/extra/matrix.html.

Using gettext in new packages
-----------------------------

If you are writing a freely available program and want to internationalize it you are welcome to use GNU gettext in your package.  Of course you have to respect the GNU Lesser General Public License which covers the use of the GNU gettext library.  This means in particular that even non-free programs can use libintl as a shared library, whereas only free software can use libintl as a static library or use modified versions of libintl.

Once the sources are changed appropriately and the setup can handle the use of gettext the only thing missing are the translations.  The Free Translation Project is also available for packages which are not developed inside the GNU project.  Therefore the information given above applies also for every other Free Software Project.  Contact coordinator@translationproject.org to make the .pot files available to the translation teams.