TRANSLATING (3611B) - raw
1 ===============================================================================
2 Translating Mail Notification
3 ===============================================================================
4
5 Index
6
7 0. About this document
8 1. Correctness
9 2. Starting up
10 3. Comments
11 4. Formatting
12 5. Capitalization
13 6. Context
14 7. Access keys
15 8. Application name
16
17 0. About this document
18
19 $Id: TRANSLATING,v 1.7 2008-01-04 15:38:21 jylefort Exp $
20
21 Copyright (C) 2005-2008 Jean-Yves Lefort.
22
23 Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this
24 document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License
25 (GFDL), Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free
26 Software Foundation with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover
27 Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. You can find a copy of the
28 GFDL at http://www.gnu.org/licenses/fdl.html or in the file
29 COPYING-DOCS distributed with this manual.
30
31 1. Correctness
32
33 To translate Mail Notification, you should have a good
34 understanding of the English language, and excellent writing
35 skills in the target language. Grammatical, spelling and
36 semantic errors should be avoided as much as possible.
37
38 2. Starting up
39
40 To generate a new .po template, type the following commands:
41
42 cd po
43 intltool-update -p
44 msginit -l LL_CC
45
46 LL must be a language code, and CC must be a country code, for
47 instance:
48
49 msginit -l it_IT
50
51 Consult the gettext and intltool documentation for more
52 informations.
53
54 3. Comments
55
56 Translator hints are prefixed with "translators:". Other
57 comments must be ignored (the extraction tools blindly copy
58 source code comments which precede translatable messages).
59
60 4. Formatting
61
62 Newlines (\n) must be preserved. Formatting elements must be
63 copied literally, but their content must be translated. For
64 instance, the message:
65
66 <span weight="bold">Fonts</span>
67
68 translates to French as:
69
70 <span weight="bold">Polices de caractères</span>
71
72 5. Capitalization
73
74 Mail Notification follows the GNOME capitalization guidelines:
75
76 http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gup/hig/2.0/design-text-labels.html#layout-capitalization
77
78 Messages which use header capitalization are marked with the
79 comment "translators: header capitalization". The header
80 capitalization rule of the target language, if any, must be
81 applied to these messages.
82
83 6. Context
84
85 Some messages are prefixed with context information (separated
86 from the actual message by the pipe character, "|"), for
87 instance:
88
89 msgid "icon tooltip's mail summary layout|Co_mpact"
90
91 The purpose of the context information is to allow different
92 translations of the same English message. The context must be
93 removed from the translations, as in:
94
95 msgid "icon tooltip's mail summary layout|Co_mpact"
96 msgstr "_Compact"
97
98 msgid "popup's mail summary layout|Co_mpact"
99 msgstr "_Compacte"
100
101 7. Access keys
102
103 Characters following an underline are access keys. The user
104 can activate the control labelled by the message by pressing
105 Alt-x, where x is the character following the underline.
106
107 When a message contains an access key, assign an appropriate
108 access key to the translation by consulting the "Choosing
109 Access Keys" section of the GNOME Human Interface Guidelines:
110
111 http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gup/hig/2.0/input-keyboard.html#choosing-access-keys
112
113 8. Application name
114
115 The application name ("Mail Notification") should be
116 translated. For historical reasons, in English, it is treated
117 as a proper noun and capitalized accordingly. However, in the
118 target language, it should be translated as a common noun
119 (such as "the washing machine" or "the mail notifier").