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| title | category | layout | SPDX-License-Identifier |
|---|---|---|---|
| Notes for Translators | Contributing | default | LGPL-2.1-or-later |
Notes for Translators
systemd depends on the gettext package for multilingual support.
You'll find the i18n files in the po/ directory.
The build system (meson/ninja) can be used to generate a template (*.pot),
which can be used to create new translations.
It can also merge the template into the existing translations (*.po), to pick
up new strings in need of translation.
Finally, it is able to compile the translations (to *.gmo files), so that
they can be used by systemd software. (This step is also useful to confirm the
syntax of the *.po files is correct.)
Creating a New Translation
To create a translation to a language not yet available, start by creating the initial template:
$ ninja -C build/ systemd-pot
This will generate file po/systemd.pot in the source tree.
Then simply copy it to a new ${lang_code}.po file, where
${lang_code} is the two-letter code for a language
(possibly followed by a two-letter uppercase country code), according to the
ISO 639 standard.
In short:
$ cp po/systemd.pot po/${lang_code}.po
Then edit the new po/${lang_code}.po file (for example,
using the poedit GUI editor.)
Updating an Existing Translation
Start by updating the *.po files from the latest template:
$ ninja -C build/ systemd-update-po
This will touch all the *.po files, so you'll want to pay attention when
creating a git commit from this change, to only include the one translation
you're actually updating.
Edit the *.po file, looking for empty translations and translations marked as
"fuzzy" (which means the merger found a similar message that needs to be
reviewed as it's expected not to match exactly.)
You can use any text editor to update the *.po files, but a good choice is
the poedit editor, a graphical application specifically designed for this
purpose.
Once you're done, create a git commit for the update of the po/*.po file you
touched. Remember to undo the changes to the other *.po files (for instance,
using git checkout -- po/ after you commit the changes you do want to keep.)
Recompiling Translations
You can recompile the *.po files using the following command:
$ ninja -C build/ systemd-gmo
The resulting files will be saved in the build/po/ directory.