Translations.md

Translations

Introduction

Parsec is currently available in English and French. Other languages should not be hard to implement, provided that someone sufficiently fluent in any language is up to the task.

Its translation format being the well known and used .PO format, translations can be done using any software supporting this format (like poedit).

Implementation

Since Parsec uses Qt, it should seem logical that we should also use Qt's translation framework. However, due to technical limitations, we switched to the gettext API.

Qt forms, once generated (python setup.py generate_pyqt_forms) are scanned, and translations strings are extracted (using python setup.py extract_translations) into PO format. PO format files, once translated, are compiled (as .mo) and stored into the Qt's resources system. We later monkeypatch Qt default translator to use our own translations at exec time.

Add a string to translate

In the source code, we use the translate function in the parsec.core.gui.lang module to mark strings are translatable.

from parsec.core.gui.lang import translate as _

l = QLabel(_("This string will be translatable."))

Translation codes

We use translations code instead of the whole English string in the source code to improve the text consistency.

# No
b = QPushButton(_("Cancel"))
# Yes
b = QPushButton(_("ACTION_CANCEL"))

Usually, codes are broken down into two categories: ACTION and TEXT. An action is something the user can click on, a text is a description. We also try to include some context on where the code is used, to make it easier to translate it later on:

b.setText(_("ACTION_BOOTSTRAP_ORGANIZATION_VALIDATE"))
# or 
line_edit.setPlaceHolder(_("TEXT_BOOTSTRAP_ORGANIZATION_URL_PLACEHOLDER"))

To use variables in the translation string :

b.setText(_("ACTION_BOOTSTRAP_ORGANIZATION_VALIDATE_organizationid-othervariable").format(organizationid=organization_id, othervariable=other_variable))

Example

In widgets :

from parsec.core.gui.lang import translate as _

number1 = 1
number2 = 2
my_label.setText("TEXT_MY_LABEL_number1-number2").format(
                number1=number1,
                number2=number2,
            )

Execute

python setup.py extract_translations

The po files should contain the newly created field :

msgid "TEXT_MY_LABEL_number1-number2"
msgstr ""

Replace the msgstr "" in po files by the message you want:

msgstr "<b>number 1:</b> {number1}\n<b>number 2:</b> {number2}"

When finished, execute python setup.py extract_translations to correctly reformat the .po file, then python setup.py generate_pyqt to include the translations in the GUI.

Resources

Microsoft International Terminology