Translations instructions

I want to translate into my own language

If you are interested in translating Frhed to your own language, we'd be happy to include your language as well.

Frhed executable translations are based on per-language PO files. PO files are text files which have original English string and translated strings listed together.

What can I translate?

Listings below show what you can actually translate for Frhed. And what is not useful to translate.

You can translate:

Currently you cannot translate:

Yes, it is a short list. We have just added ability to translate program and will work enabling more translatable components. Help is welcome with that work too.

Translating Frhed

We use gettext PO files for the translation of the Frhed program. PO files are plain text, so you can even translate using a normal text editor. But we recommend that you use poEdit or other tools that can handle and manipulate PO files.

NOTE: We are not using gettext itself as a translation system, we only use PO- and POT-files as files to have translations. Our translation system is custom-made for Frhed. Most of the system is derived from WinMerge.

The Quick Way

The easiest and fastest way to improve existing translation is to edit languagecode.PO file from Translationns/Frhed/ -folder. The PO files are text files so most editor programs can be used. Edit the file, save it and start Frhed. The changes should be visible in Frhed.

This is the fastest way to improve and fix translations. And we of course accept changes done this way. However there is a better way too, but it is more work.

The Recommended Way

Grab a copy of the source code from Subversion or go to our home page and download the latest archive with sources. If you can't find it, then please ask us and we will send the file to you.

The PO template English.pot and the languagecode .po translation files are located under the Translations\Frhed\ folder in the source code.

Add new language to Frhed

  1. Copy and rename English.pot to languagecode .po, where languagecode is the ISO 639 language code of your language. Eg. German language's code is 'de' and the po file is de.po

  2. Now translate what you can using poEdit. If you are not sure with one or the other translation, mark it as fuzzy. You can enter a comment in poEdit to give some information about your thoughts to other translators.

  3. Once you have translated all the strings, then you need to upload your PO file to our patch tracker (please leave your contact information in case there are any problems that need to be resolved). In case you have problems uploading the patch, you can also send it to us by e-mail.

  4. One of the developers will review your translation; if there are problems, we will contact you to get them resolved. When everything is working your translation will be committed to the source control and included in the next release of Frhed.

  5. When the next major release is imminent, we will notify you again to give you a chance to update the translation with any new/changed strings.

Update existing language

  1. Get the English.pot template and the languagecode .po file you want to improve.
  2. Start poEdit with YourLanguage.po and select Update from .pot file from the "Catalog" menu.
  3. Select English.pot and wait until poEdit has finished merging the template and the current translation.
  4. The untranslated strings (and fuzzy translations) are always at the top of the list.
  5. Translate what you can and upload the resulting PO file to SF.net as a patch.