2 This document describes how to add a new language translation to PhpWiki.
4 If you just want to use one of the existing language translations, see
5 part three in 'index.php' to change the default language of your
6 Wiki. Modify the line that sets $LANG to use the two-letter code of
7 one of the supported languages, like this:
9 // Select your language/locale - default language "C": English
10 // other languages available: Dutch "nl", Spanish "es", German "de",
11 // Swedish "sv", and Italian, "it".
16 Phpwiki uses GNU gettext tools to provide and maintain multi-lingual
17 messages for different languages. Even if you are already familiar
18 with xgettext you will want to read this document to be aware of
19 translation issues and tips specific to PhpWiki; perhaps skimming
20 through the Makefile section.
22 PhpWiki does not require gettext support to be compiled in to PHP. It
23 automatically provides a pure PHP replacement in case it's not
29 The modern English language has no clear rules for differentiating
30 between the formal and informal use of the spoken word. This both
31 simplifies and complicates matters for translators, as many languages
32 do still make such a distinction. For the most part, PhpWiki is written
33 using the casual forms of messages and explanatory text--after all the
34 WikiWikiWeb is an open and friendly place. :-)
36 However, there is no reason why translations of Wiki commands like
37 "Edit" or "FindPages" should not be written formally. For the sake of
38 recognition or clarity when the word function is the same as another
39 common computer term or menu-item, if you feel it would be more
40 effective to employ a formal variation then please do so. When the
41 formal word is significantly longer than the informal word, make a
42 judgement call or substitute an abbreviation, provided that it will
45 Remember that a good and thorough translation is a subjective and
46 collective process. Once people have had a chance to test-drive your
47 newly-translated PhpWiki there will always be suggestions for
48 reshaping and improving it.
50 Diversity and Change are part of WikiEssence. By all means don't
51 belabour the translation process, and have some fun!
56 The general steps to creating a new language module for PhpWiki:
58 1. Copy and rename the master template to create a new file for your
59 language ('phpwiki.pot' => 'xx.po').
61 2. Translate all the strings in the new language file ('.po file').
63 3. Run 'make' to automatically create or update any additional files
64 ('.po' => '.mo' => 'phpwiki.php' files).
66 4. Create translations of the content for the default pages ('pgsrc'
72 Let's assume for example that you would like to add an Islandic
73 translation to PhpWiki.
78 Duplicate the file phpwiki.pot in the 'locale/po/' folder and name it
79 'is.po' ('is' is the code for Islandic). Next, translate all the
80 strings inside 'is.po' from English to Islandic. Unix Hint: Emacs has
81 a handy "po translation mode" for you. See README.coding in the doc folder.
83 Important note about character encoding:
84 Currently all the language files are saved using the ISO-8859-1
85 character encoding to preserve accented characters. Make sure the text
86 editor you use is capable of performing the appropriate Latin-1
87 translation. Strictly speaking, ISO-8859-1 is *different* than Windows
88 code page 1252 or MacRoman. Upon quick inspection one will notice that
89 many of the letters do occupy the same positions in each of their'
90 respective encoding tables, so it is easy to understand how people can
91 make this false assumption.
96 Different languages have different word ordering requirements. When a
97 key word such as a person's name needs to be added to the end of a
98 sentence in english, there is no guarantee that the same word will
99 appear at the end of a sentence once translated to another language.
101 PhpWiki has been designed with this in mind. (Standard printf
102 notations like %s and %1$s, %2$s will work with PhpWiki, even though
103 reordering of variable-substitutions is not actually part of PHP).
104 (The printf(3) manual page on your system may be of some help.)
107 Take the following English phrase as an example. This message would be
108 displayed in the browser when someone wants to compare two revisions
109 of a Wiki page. The corresponding entry for the German translation for
110 this phrase (from the file 'de.po') reads:
112 #: ../lib/diff.php:251
114 msgid "Differences between %s and %s of %s."
115 msgstr "Der Unterschiedsergebnis von %3$s, zwischen %1$s und %2$s"
117 In the English version, PhpWiki will substitute the phrases "version
118 1", "version 2" and the name of the page being compared. The
119 placeholder '%s' indicates where text will later be substituted, while
120 '%d' is used to indicate a number will be inserted.
122 Sentence structure of German is different than English, and this case
123 dictates that the "page name" must come first, then followed by
124 "Verson 1." and finally "Version 2."
126 To summarize, when the word ordering must differ, insert "1$", "2$"
127 etc. into the middle of '%s' and repeat for each instance of '%s' in
128 the phrase. If you use this "$" notation, you must use it for each
129 of the the format specifications within the string.
131 Here are a couple more examples. They are fictional but they serve to
132 illustrate how to handle special cases, should they arise:
135 #msgid "Page version '%d' named '%s' is not available."
136 #msgstr "Xyqlmn vvvm » %2$s « mnqee » %1$d « Gvbbbnbhkkk eeek."
138 The %s and %d are reversed, so '2$' and '1$' have been used to
139 indicate the new ordering. The punctuation marks for this language
140 dictate extra spacing, so this has also been accounted for in the
141 translation (i.e. the quote marks are only for emphasis, they are not
142 considered part of the %s placeholder).
145 #msgid "Page named '%s' version '%d' written by author '%s' is not available."
146 #msgstr "Qppn wwmoooppp '%3$s' vvvm '%1$s' mnqee '%2$d' Gvbbbnbhkkk eeek."
148 Name and author are reversed. Even though the position of the number
149 ('%d') isn't changed, still it must be changed to '%2$d' --- if you
150 use a '$' on one of the format specifiers you must use it on all of
151 them. The punctuation for this particular language is the same as
152 english so it is unchanged.
155 While translating the text strings if you are uncertain about the
156 syntax, look at the '.po' files of the other languages as an
157 example. If you are stuck or simply can't make any sense of all this,
158 just ask one of the PhpWiki programmers on the mailing list to help
161 The 'phpwiki.php' files do not need to be created or edited because
162 the Makefile will create and update these files automatically. See the
163 'Makefile' section below.
168 Most of the work will be in the translation of the default pgsrc
169 files. As a starting point you can copy the English 'pgsrc' directory:
172 cp -rv pgsrc locale/is
174 For these 'pgsrc' files it will be sufficient to change the page names
175 to Islandic, and maybe translate the HomePage and give it an Islandic
176 name. Again, for anything you don't know, look at the 'nl' or 'de'
179 The best approach to translating the default page content is to do all
180 of your page editing in the web browser itself, then perform a page
181 dump to save the pages as MIME text files. Some of the pages are
182 locked so you will have to log into PhpWiki as the administrator
183 before you can edit them.
186 Add instructions for editing MIME headers of files before moving
187 files into '/locale/is/pgsrc'
189 - keep modification date, page name and lock, remove author.
192 Date: Sun, 27 Jan 2002 17:28:55 -0500
193 Mime-Version: 1.0 (Produced by PhpWiki 1.3.2-jeffs-hacks)
194 X-Rcs-Id: $Id: README,v 1.11 2003-11-18 19:23:57 carstenklapp Exp $
195 Content-Type: application/x-phpwiki;
196 pagename=FrischeSeiten;
199 Content-Transfer-Encoding: binary
201 - Make sure to rename files with accents in the page name converted
202 to uppercase hex codes as shown in the pagename= line of the
205 (e.g. "GästeBuch" => "G%E4steBuch")
207 - Translate body text and rename plugin pages to match changes
208 specified in the '.po' file. Leave plugin code as english.
211 <?plugin RecentChanges days||=30 show_all||=0 show_minor||=0 ?>
218 The Makefile calls 'xgettext' to automatically perform a number of
219 important translation tasks:
221 * Scans through all the source code and retrieves the english
222 strings used as text arguments, then collects and indexes them into
223 the file 'phpwiki.pot'.
225 * Merges any new differences of the collected English text strings
226 with similar text strings found during any previous runs of 'make',
227 stored inside each of the translated '.po' files.
229 * Makes note of which English text strings have been added, reworded
230 or removed. The translated strings in the '.po' files are then marked
231 as "Fuzzy" translations for all cases where the English text has been
232 changed. This makes it easy for translators to spot which items need
233 to be updated. (Emacs' po mode also uses this information).
235 * The necessary '.mo' files and 'phpwiki.php' text files are
236 synchronized and sorted according to the translated contents of the
237 '.po' files, for each of the locale subdirectories.
239 When a new language module is added to PhpWiki, the 'Makefile' in the
240 'locale' folder also needs to be updated. The process:
242 0. Change into the locale directory (if you're not already there.)
244 1. If there isn't one already, Create a new .po (in the po/ subdirectory)
245 for your translations:
247 cp po/phpwiki.pot po/xx.po
249 where 'xx' should be the two letter character code for the language
250 you are translating to.
252 2. If you've created a new .po file (or if there are new .php source files
253 containing translatable strings,) update the Makefile:
257 3. To make sure the list of translatable strings in the .po is in sync
258 with the actual php source code:
262 4. Edit the translations in the .po file. If you have emacs available,
263 emacs' po-mode is very helpful when doing this.
265 5. Translators may include comments in the po file. If using a text
266 editor other than emacs (with po-mode), add any comments BEFORE an
267 entry, and prefix each line with # like this:
269 # This entry is important for French punctuation rules which stipulate
270 # a space before each colon.
271 #: ../lib/display.php:54 ../lib/plugin/PageGroup.php:91
272 #: ../lib/plugin/PageGroup.php:156 ../lib/plugin/PageGroup.php:167
273 #: ../lib/plugin/PageGroup.php:183 ../lib/plugin/PageGroup.php:190
274 #: ../lib/plugin/PageHistory.php:216 ../lib/plugin/UnfoldSubpages.php:164
275 #: ../themes/default/templates/head.tmpl:46
280 6. To update the compiled translation files (phpwiki.mo and
285 Make will then automatically generate and update all the necessary
286 files. If this step fails because you don't have the necessary
287 software installed, then send your '.po' files to one of the PhpWiki
288 developers who will run Makefile for you.
291 NOTE: "Fuzzy" translations will NOT be included in the final '.mo' and
292 'phpwiki.php' files. If you are not using the emacs editor, make sure
293 to remove the fuzzy marks from any *completed translations* before you
294 run the makefile, like this:
296 #: ../lib/plugin/BackLinks.php:44
298 msgid "These pages link to %s:"
299 msgstr "%d pages pointent vers %s."
303 #: ../lib/plugin/BackLinks.php:44
305 msgid "These pages link to %s:"
306 msgstr "%d pages pointent vers %s."
310 #: ../lib/Toolbar.php:160 ../templates/browse.html:54
313 msgstr "Bloquear página"
317 #: ../lib/Toolbar.php:160 ../templates/browse.html:54
319 msgstr "Bloquear página"
324 The template files do not need to be translated. As of PhpWiki 1.3 all
325 the text strings in the html templates are cross-referenced with the
326 translations in the '.po' files.
328 *** Note: Updating html template translations from PhpWiki 1.2 to 1.3: ***
330 The translated version of the tips for TextFormattingRules must be
331 moved from the old html template 'editpage.html', and placed into the
332 'pgsrc' for the default page of TextFormattingRules. A plugin now
333 extracts this text and inserts it when editing a page in PhpWiki,
334 rather than it being embedded within the html template itself.
336 It is suggested this paragraph would go at the top of the page. It
337 must be in a section heading entitled "Summary" in order for the
338 editpage template to find it. Of course you will substitute the
339 translations for "TextFormattingRules" and "Summary", according to the
340 wording you used for these phrases when you translated the '.po' file.
342 Refer to the English "TextFormattingRules" and German (de)
343 "TextFormatierungsRegeln" pages to see working examples.
348 After you have finished translating, you will want to see the result
349 of your efforts. Change the $LANG setting in 'index.php' to the
350 two-letter code for your language.
352 Et voilà, Phpwiki should now speak Islandic!
354 If your translation was a success, you may also want to add a
355 translation of these instructions for translating PhpWiki ;-)
359 To learn more about GNU gettext and '.po' files, you may find some
362 <http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/contrib/po/HTML/>
363 <http://www.gnu.org/directory/gettext>
366 Jan Nieuwenhuizen <janneke@gnu.org>
367 Arno Hollosi <ahollosi@mail.com>
368 Carsten Klapp <carstenklapp@users.sourceforge.net>
370 $Id: README,v 1.11 2003-11-18 19:23:57 carstenklapp Exp $