1 # Core GIT Translations
3 This directory holds the translations for the core of Git. This document
4 describes how you can contribute to the effort of enhancing the language
5 coverage and maintaining the translation.
7 The localization (l10n) coordinator, Jiang Xin <worldhello.net@gmail.com>,
8 coordinates our localization effort in the l10 coordinator repository:
10 https://github.com/git-l10n/git-po/
12 The two character language translation codes are defined by ISO\_639-1, as
13 stated in the gettext(1) full manual, appendix A.1, Usual Language Codes.
16 ## Contributing to an existing translation
18 As a contributor for a language XX, you should first check TEAMS file in
19 this directory to see whether a dedicated repository for your language XX
20 exists. Fork the dedicated repository and start to work if it exists.
22 Sometime, contributors may find that the translations of their Git
23 distributions are quite different with the translations of the
24 corresponding version from Git official. This is because some Git
25 distributions (such as from Ubuntu, etc.) have their own l10n workflow.
26 For this case, wrong translations should be reported and fixed through
30 ## Creating a new language translation
32 If you are the first contributor for the language XX, please fork this
33 repository, prepare and/or update the translated message file "po/XX.po"
34 (described later), and ask the l10n coordinator to pull your work.
36 If there are multiple contributors for the same language, please first
37 coordinate among yourselves and nominate the team leader for your
38 language, so that the l10n coordinator only needs to interact with one
44 The core translation is the smallest set of work that must be completed
45 for a new language translation. Because there are more than 5000 messages
46 in the template message file "po/git.pot" that need to be translated,
47 this is not a piece of cake for the contributor for a new language.
49 The core template message file which contains a small set of messages
50 will be generated in "po-core/core.pot" automatically by running a helper
51 program named "git-po-helper" (described later).
54 git-po-helper init --core XX.po
57 After translating the generated "po-core/XX.po", you can merge it to
58 "po/XX.po" using the following commands:
61 msgcat po-core/XX.po po/XX.po -s -o /tmp/XX.po
62 mv /tmp/XX.po po/XX.po
63 git-po-helper update XX.po
66 Edit "po/XX.po" by hand to fix "fuzzy" messages, which may have misplaced
67 translated messages and duplicate messages.
70 ## Translation Process Flow
72 The overall data-flow looks like this:
74 +-------------------+ +------------------+
75 | Git source code | ---(1)---> | L10n coordinator |
76 | repository | <---(4)--- | repository |
77 +-------------------+ +------------------+
85 - Translatable strings are marked in the source file.
86 - L10n coordinator pulls from the source (1)
87 - L10n coordinator updates the message template "po/git.pot"
88 - Language team pulls from L10n coordinator (2)
89 - Language team updates the message file "po/XX.po"
90 - L10n coordinator pulls from Language team (3)
91 - L10n coordinator asks the result to be pulled (4).
94 ## Maintaining the "po/git.pot" file
96 (This is done by the l10n coordinator).
98 The "po/git.pot" file contains a message catalog extracted from Git's
99 sources. The l10n coordinator maintains it by adding new translations with
100 msginit(1), or update existing ones with msgmerge(1). In order to update
101 the Git sources to extract the messages from, the l10n coordinator is
102 expected to pull from the main git repository at strategic point in
103 history (e.g. when a major release and release candidates are tagged),
104 and then run "make pot" at the top-level directory.
106 Language contributors use this file to prepare translations for their
107 language, but they are not expected to modify it.
110 ## Initializing a "XX.po" file
112 (This is done by the language teams).
114 If your language XX does not have translated message file "po/XX.po" yet,
115 you add a translation for the first time by running:
121 in the "po/" directory, where XX is the locale, e.g. "de", "is", "pt\_BR",
124 Then edit the automatically generated copyright info in your new "XX.po"
125 to be correct, e.g. for Icelandic:
129 -# Icelandic translations for PACKAGE package.
130 -# Copyright (C) 2010 THE PACKAGE'S COPYRIGHT HOLDER
131 -# This file is distributed under the same license as the PACKAGE package.
132 +# Icelandic translations for Git.
133 +# Copyright (C) 2010 Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason <avarab@gmail.com>
134 +# This file is distributed under the same license as the Git package.
135 # Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason <avarab@gmail.com>, 2010.
138 And change references to PACKAGE VERSION in the PO Header Entry to
142 perl -pi -e 's/(?<="Project-Id-Version: )PACKAGE VERSION/Git/' XX.po
145 Once you are done testing the translation (see below), commit the result
146 and ask the l10n coordinator to pull from you.
149 ## Updating a "XX.po" file
151 (This is done by the language teams).
153 If you are replacing translation strings in an existing "XX.po" file to
154 improve the translation, just edit the file.
156 If there's an existing "XX.po" file for your language, but the repository
157 of the l10n coordinator has newer "po/git.pot" file, you would need to first
158 pull from the l10n coordinator (see the beginning of this document for its
159 URL), and then update the existing translation by running:
162 msgmerge --add-location --backup=off -U XX.po git.pot
165 in the "po/" directory, where "XX.po" is the file you want to update.
167 Once you are done testing the translation (see below), commit the result
168 and ask the l10n coordinator to pull from you.
173 Fuzzy translation is a translation marked by comment "fuzzy" to let you
174 know that the translation is out of date because the "msgid" has been
175 changed. A fuzzy translation will be ignored when compiling using "msgfmt".
176 Fuzzy translation can be marked by hands, but for most cases they are
177 marked automatically when running "msgmerge" to update your "XX.po" file.
179 After fixing the corresponding translation, you must remove the "fuzzy"
183 ## Testing your changes
185 (This is done by the language teams, after creating or updating "XX.po" file).
187 Before you submit your changes go back to the top-level and do:
193 On systems with GNU gettext (i.e. not Solaris) this will compile your
194 changed PO file with `msgfmt --check`, the --check option flags many
195 common errors, e.g. missing printf format strings, or translated
196 messages that deviate from the originals in whether they begin/end
197 with a newline or not.
200 ## Marking strings for translation
202 (This is done by the core developers).
204 Before strings can be translated they first have to be marked for
207 Git uses an internationalization interface that wraps the system's
208 gettext library, so most of the advice in your gettext documentation
209 (on GNU systems `info gettext` in a terminal) applies.
213 - Don't mark everything for translation, only strings which will be
214 read by humans (the porcelain interface) should be translated.
216 The output from Git's plumbing utilities will primarily be read by
217 programs and would break scripts under non-C locales if it was
218 translated. Plumbing strings should not be translated, since
219 they're part of Git's API.
221 - Adjust the strings so that they're easy to translate. Most of the
222 advice in `info '(gettext)Preparing Strings'` applies here.
224 - If something is unclear or ambiguous you can use a "TRANSLATORS"
225 comment to tell the translators what to make of it. These will be
226 extracted by xgettext(1) and put in the "po/\*.po" files, e.g. from
230 # TRANSLATORS: Make sure to include [y], [n], [e], [v] and [a]
231 # in your translation. The program will only accept English
232 # input at this point.
233 gettext "Apply? [y]es/[n]o/[e]dit/[v]iew patch/[a]ccept all "
236 Or in C, from builtin/revert.c:
239 /* TRANSLATORS: %s will be "revert" or "cherry-pick" */
240 die(_("%s: Unable to write new index file"), action_name(opts));
243 We provide wrappers for C, Shell and Perl programs. Here's how they're
249 Include builtin.h at the top, it'll pull in gettext.h, which
250 defines the gettext interface. Consult with the list if you need to
251 use gettext.h directly.
253 The C interface is a subset of the normal GNU gettext
254 interface. We currently export these functions:
258 Mark and translate a string. E.g.:
261 printf(_("HEAD is now at %s"), hex);
266 Mark and translate a plural string. E.g.:
269 printf(Q_("%d commit", "%d commits", number_of_commits));
272 This is just a wrapper for the ngettext() function.
276 A no-op pass-through macro for marking strings inside static
277 initializations, e.g.:
280 static const char *reset_type_names[] = {
281 N_("mixed"), N_("soft"), N_("hard"), N_("merge"), N_("keep"), NULL
288 die(_("%s reset is not allowed in a bare repository"),
289 _(reset_type_names[reset_type]));
292 Here `_()` couldn't have statically determined what the translation
293 string will be, but since it was already marked for translation
294 with `N_()` the look-up in the message catalog will succeed.
299 The Git gettext shell interface is just a wrapper for
300 gettext.sh. Import it right after git-sh-setup like this:
307 And then use the `gettext` or `eval_gettext` functions:
310 # For constant interface messages:
311 gettext "A message for the user"; echo
313 # To interpolate variables:
315 eval_gettext "An error occurred: \$details"; echo
318 In addition we have wrappers for messages that end with a trailing
319 newline. I.e. you could write the above as:
322 # For constant interface messages:
323 gettextln "A message for the user"
325 # To interpolate variables:
327 eval_gettextln "An error occurred: \$details"
330 More documentation about the interface is available in the GNU info
331 page: `info '(gettext)sh'`. Looking at git-am.sh (the first shell
332 command to be translated) for examples is also useful:
335 git log --reverse -p --grep=i18n git-am.sh
341 The Git::I18N module provides a limited subset of the
342 Locale::Messages functionality, e.g.:
346 print __("Welcome to Git!\n");
347 printf __("The following error occurred: %s\n"), $error;
350 Run `perldoc perl/Git/I18N.pm` for more info.
353 ## Testing marked strings
355 Git's tests are run under `LANG=C LC_ALL=C`. So the tests do not need be
356 changed to account for translations as they're added.
361 To make the maintenance of "XX.po" easier, the l10n coordinator and l10n
362 team leaders can use a helper program named "git-po-helper". It is a
363 wrapper to gettext suite, specifically written for the purpose of Git
366 To build and install the helper program from source, see
367 [git-po-helper/README][].
369 Usage for git-po-helper:
371 - To start a new language translation:
374 git-po-helper init XX.po
377 - To update your "XX.po" file:
380 git-po-helper update XX.po
383 - To check commit log and syntax of "XX.po":
386 git-po-helper check-po XX.po
387 git-po-helper check-commits
390 Run "git-po-helper" without arguments to show usage.
395 There are some conventions that l10n contributors must follow:
397 - The subject of each l10n commit should be prefixed with "l10n: ".
399 - Do not use non-ASCII characters in the subject of a commit.
401 - The length of commit subject (first line of the commit log) should
402 be less than 50 characters, and the length of other lines of the
403 commit log should be no more than 72 characters.
405 - Add "Signed-off-by" trailer to your commit log, like other commits
406 in Git. You can automatically add the trailer by committing with
407 the following command:
413 - Check syntax with "msgfmt" or the following command before creating
417 git-po-helper check-po <XX.po>
420 - Squash trivial commits to make history clear.
422 - DO NOT edit files outside "po/" directory.
424 - Other subsystems ("git-gui", "gitk", and Git itself) have their
425 own workflow. See [Documentation/SubmittingPatches][] for
426 instructions on how to contribute patches to these subsystems.
429 To contribute for a new l10n language, contributor should follow
430 additional conventions:
432 - Initialize proper filename of the "XX.po" file conforming to
433 iso-639 and iso-3166.
435 - Must complete a minimal translation based on the "po-core/core.pot"
436 template. Using the following command to initialize the minimal
437 "po-core/XX.po" file:
440 git-po-helper init --core <your-language>
443 - Add a new entry in the "po/TEAMS" file with proper format, and check
444 the syntax of "po/TEAMS" by running the following command:
447 git-po-helper team --check
451 [git-po-helper/README]: https://github.com/git-l10n/git-po-helper#readme
452 [Documentation/SubmittingPatches]: Documentation/SubmittingPatches