Translating the user interface

This section provides step by step instructions on how to translate the user interface to your favourite language.

Hint

We are very keen on receiving translations for additional languages. And it’s an easy way for you to contribute back to the frePPLe community.

1. Add support for an additional language

You may skip this step if you just want to improve already existing translations.

Copy the directory contrib/django/freppledb/locale/en to a new subdirectory with the name of your language code.

The possible language codes can be found on the World Wide Web Consortium.

If you want to create instalation packages including the new language then the installer also needs updating. The files contrib/installer/parameters.ini and contrib/installer/frepple.nsi need straightforward editing.

To get it working you must also add the new language to contrib/django/djangosettings.py (or bin\djangosettings.py in the binary Windows installation). Add the new language code and description to the variable LANGUAGES:

LANGUAGES = (
  ('en', ugettext('English')),
  ('es', ugettext('Spanish')),
  ('fr', ugettext('French')),
  ('it', ugettext('Italian')),
  ('ja', ugettext('Japanese')),
  ('nl', ugettext('Dutch')),
  ('pt', ugettext('Portuguese')),
  ('pt-br', ugettext('Brazilian Portuguese')),
  ('zh-cn', ugettext('Simplified Chinese')),
  ('zh-tw', ugettext('Traditional Chinese')),
)

2. Pick an editor

For the translation process you should install an editor for gettext catalogs (.po files).

Highly recommended is the free Poedit tool.

3. Start translating

Navigate to contrib/django/freppledb/locale/ go to the folder with the language you intend to translate, and use your editor to open the django.po and djangojs.po files.

In these files you will find all the strings that may be translated.

Hint

Some strings may include HTML tags or Python code, i.e.:

%(title)s for %(entity)s

In this case just copy the entire string and translate “for”, resulting in:

%(title)s para %(entity)s

3. Test the translations

You can now test the translations, after a restart of the web server.

Update your user preferences to use the language you translated. If your browser has the language as the preferred language, this isn’t required.