DTC now uses gettext technology (the industry standard for internationalization and localization), with the express goal of making it easy for you to get DTC in your language.
Here's the process, in a nutshell:
- Get your copy of DTC (preferably from the master Git repository)
- run
make l12n in the top-level directory you got
- start translating
- send us a patch file or the translation file
Getting DTC
You can use both a tarball that contains DTC (preferably the latest release) or the latest revision of our Git repository. We'd rather you translate the latest revision because it makes your and our jobs easier (honest!), so here's how you check out something from Git:
git clone http://git.gplhost.com/dtc.git
Rebuilding the translations
Now change into the DTC directory you just got, and run:
make i18n
Start translating
The file you need to translate corresponds to the language you want. For example: dtc/shared/vars/es_ES.po refers to the Spanish variant of Spain. dtc/shared/vars/es_AR.po would be the Argentinian Spanish file, and dtc/shared/vars/de_DE.po would be German from Germany variant. If the language you're targeting doesn't exist yet, copy the template.pot file to the appropriate file name, respecting the ISO language and country codes for it.
I suggest you use an application like KBabel(approve sites) to do the translation job. It's much easier than using a text editor. In all likelihood, your Linux distribution carries it, so there shouldn't be a problem installing it.
Send us the patch or file!
It's fine if you do not manage to translate the *entire* application. 1% is better than 0%. So don't be afraid of sending them!
Once you're done, you can use Git to generate a patch (a file describing the differences between what was before, and what's new). Try the git-format-patch command, or if you're in a hurry, go to the top level DTC directory and run:
git diff -u > my-language_my-name_strings.patch
You can also publish your Git repository somewhere on the Internet we can pull. Or, if you don't want to, just send us the translated file.
Send the translations to dtcdev@gplhost.sg. Normally, you can't send to the list it if you didn't subscribe to it before (we did it like that to avoid spam to our users). To subscribe, send a mail to dtcdev-subscribe@gplhost.sg and reply to the confirmation email that will arrive shortly afterwards. You do not risk anything by subscribing -- the archive removes the domain names from the display.
