Translating Extension Manager

March 2, 2024 · View on GitHub

Contributions to translations are always welcome!

There are two ways to translate Extension Manager, via Weblate or manually, choose your favorite.

Tip

Use Weblate if you don't know which one to choose.

Via Weblate

We use Weblate - an open source continuous localisation tool - for translation management. Access to Hosted Weblate is kindly provided free of charge to the Extension Manager project.

Translation status

Manually

If you are totally new to GTK software translation (or software development in general), fear not! The entire process is explained below in as much detail as possible. If you have any trouble, please get in touch.

If you already have experience with translating GTK applications, remember that Extension Manager is written in C. You will need to rebuild it every time you make a change to the po files.

How to add new translation

  1. You need software to translate Extension Manager (in this case, we will use POEdit) and GNOME Builder to build and test your translation.
  2. Clone Extension Manager repository to your device.
  • Using git:
git clone git@github.com:mjakeman/extension-manager.git
  • Using Github:
  1. Click green button Code.

  1. In opened menu click Download ZIP.

  1. Save it in your ~/ home folder.
  2. Unpack archive with archive manager of your choice.
  3. Rename folder that will be unpacked from archive to extension-manager.
  • Using GNOME Builder:
  1. Run GNOME Builder.
  2. Click Clone Repository button at the bottom.
  3. In Repository URL paste: https://github.com/mjakeman/extension-manager
  4. Set Location to ~/
  5. Click Clone Repository and wait until it's done.

You can leave GNOME Builder open as we will use it again later.

  1. You need the pot file that lies inside ./po folder. Make sure that the pot file is up-to-date before proceeding.
  2. Open it with POEditor.
  3. Click on button at the bottom of window Create a new translation.

  1. Select your desired language.

  1. Press Ctrl+S or File > Save to save new file, place it inside ./po folder with filename that POEdit gave you.
  2. Open ./po/LINGUAS file with any text editor, and add there locale code of your language. For example, if you want to add Ukrainian translation, POEdit will suggest you filename uk.po, so in LINGUAS file, you need to add uk. And, please, keep locale codes in alphabetical order.

But sometimes, you might want to specify a variant for your language. For example, for Russian in Russia Federation, you need to set locale to ru_RU, instead of just ru.

You can learn more about locales here.

  1. Translate Extension Manager!
  2. Test your translation.

How to test translation

After you have finished your translation, you will want to test it. The easiest way to do so is to use GNOME Builder.

If you chose to clone the repository using GNOME Builder in How to add new translation and have not closed the GNOME Builder window, skip to step 4.

  1. If you haven't already install GNOME Builder, install it now.
  2. Open GNOME Builder.
  3. Click on button at the bottom of window Select a Folder... and pick folder with Extension Manager source that we cloned before.

  1. In top-center, click on button with triangle pointing down.

  1. In opened menu pick Rebuild.

  1. Wait until you get Build succeeded in upper-center text box.

  1. Click on button with triangle pointing down in upper-center.

  1. In opened menu pick Install.

  1. Open New Runtime Terminal.

With Ctrl+Alt+T shortcut or click + button in top-left corner and pick New Runtime Terminal.

  1. In opened terminal, you need to force locale that you want to test. Usually, it will match locale name of your po file or it might require to specify your regional code. For example, to force application in Ukrainian language, you need to type:
LC_ALL=uk_UA.UTF-8

Where you need to replace uk_UA with your desired locale.

You can learn more about locales here.

  1. Run extension-manager to run Extension Manager, which would use locale that you want to test.

Once you have finished your changes, you need to refresh the application so it will apply changes to translation. To do so:

  1. Stop current running Extension Manager with Ctrl+C in terminal or simply close Extension Manager window.
  2. Then click on button on top-center with triangle pointing down in GNOME Builder.

  1. In opened menu pick Rebuild.

  1. Wait until GNOME Builder rebuild Extension Manager.

  1. Now close this terminal with:
exit

Or just click cross symbol on tab with this terminal.

  1. After that, repeat instructions from How to test translation section, starting from step 7. Do this every time, when you do some changes to po file to see them in Extension Manager.

How to update existing translation

If you want to update the translation that someone else already did:

  1. Try to contact original translator. You might find their contact info in top of po file of translation that you want to update (if you will open it via any text editor) or in translator-credits and ask them about changes in translation.
  2. If you can't contact them for some reasons or they don't respond, then just translate on your own.
  3. Re-generate pot file.
  4. Open po file that you want to update with POEditor.
  5. In top menu click Translation.

  1. In opened menu pick Update from POT file…, and then pick pot file that you re-generated earlier.

  1. If you wish, don't forget to add yourself to translator-credits (DON'T REMOVE PREVIOUS TRANSLATORS THERE, just add your credit on newline) and in top of po file via text editor.
  2. Send pull request.

Try to be consistent with choices that previous translator did, unless they contradict other GTK/GNOME applications translated terms or you think that your translation will suit better.

How to contribute your translation

If you think that you done with translating, it's time to send your translation as pull request to developers of Extension Manager!

This part might be tricky to someone who not familiar with software development and Github, so if you don't understand something, you can contact community/developers here, where you will get help!

  1. Make sure, that you have account on Github. And if not, create one.

  2. Also make sure, that you know some basics about how to make pull requests: How to make pull request from fork and How to create fork.

  3. Upload changes that you make in your local copy of repository to your Github fork.

If you already know how to use git, this can be done like this:

cd extension-manager
git commit -m "I translated Extension Manager!"
git push

If not, you could use Github interface to do so:

  1. Open your fork on Github, navigate to ./po folder.
  2. Click Add file then Upload files and pick your translated po file and LINGUAS (in case if you added new translation. For updates to existing translation you don't need to send LINGUAS).
  3. Make sure that everything is correct, there are no typos in translation, mistakes, you didn't upload wrong files by accident, etc.
  4. Open pull request to Extension Manager repository against your fork.

Tips about translating

  1. Try to be consistent in your translation with other GTK/GNOME applications.

Pick same terms, use same accelerators, etc.

  1. Always test your translation before opening pull request.

  2. Open your po file with any text editor, not with POEdit, and in top most of file you will find some placeholder info for your translation. Please, fill it, if you can. Take as example uk.po file.

  3. translator-credits is optional and if you are not comfortable with sharing your alias, email or link, then leave it as-is. Also, if there are credits for other translators, please, don't remove them. Just add your credit info on newline.

If you want to put email, do this:

your_alias <somecooladress@mail.com>

And if you want to place link:

your_alias https://example.com

You can check if you input everything correctly in About dialog of Extension Manager.

Regenerate POT files

If you want to regenerate the pot file (i.e. when it hasn't been updated in a while), there are a few steps that need to be followed:

  • Using GNOME Builder:
  1. Open GNOME builder.
  2. Open New Runtime Terminal with Ctrl+Alt+T or click plus button in top-left corner and pick New Runtime Terminal

  1. And replace contents of POTFILES with output of print-source-files.sh.
cd extension-manager/po
./print-source-files.sh > ./POTFILES

  1. Go to the build directory (typically _build, but whichever you specified when running meson) and initialize it.

Like this:

cd
cd extension-manager
mkdir ./_build
cd ./_build
meson

  1. Now meson is initialized and you can re-generate pot file.

Like this:

meson compile extension-manager-pot

  1. Now close this terminal with:
exit

Or just click cross symbol on tab with this terminal.

  • Without GNOME Builder:
  1. Make sure that you have meson and gettext utilities installed on your system. Refer to your distribution package manager.
  2. Go to po directory and run print-source-files.sh.
cd extension-manager/po
./print-source-files.sh > ./POTFILES
  1. Go to the build directory (typically _build, but whichever you specified when running meson) and initialize it.

Like this:

cd extension-manager
mkdir ./_build
cd ./_build
meson
  1. Now meson is initialized and you can re-generate pot file.

Like this:

meson compile extension-manager-pot