This translators' HOWTO is meant for translation team coordinators, new translators, and everybody else interested in the subject of translating KDE. It gives a first overview of how new languages are introduced to KDE, and how the translations of the graphic user interface, the on-line help, and other KDE-related things are actually done. It also takes a closer look at resources available to assist translators in the process. Other important areas (e.g. how to compile KDE sources or how to find one's way around SVN) are referenced throughout.

A current HTML version of this document can be found at l10n.kde.org/translation-howto. To contribute, comment, or correct, please send email to kde-i18n-doc mailing list.

Keywords: KDE, translation, HOWTO, I18N, internationalization, L10N, localization

Introduction

The transition from the KDE Software Collection to the new release scheme Frameworks, Plasma Workspace and Applications introduced major changes to the workflow for KDE translators.

This document is a simple tutorial for translation. If you are not sure about how to interpret what is written here, please ask the kde-i18n-doc mailing list. If you want to know more on localization, please refer to this page.

In this document are a few email addresses from persons, not only from mailing lists. Most of these persons, if not all, are volunteers, and therefore might not be able to answer within a day (even less in near real-time). If you do not get any answer for days (at most a week), please ask the kde-i18n-doc@kde.org mailing list instead. (If you had attached an attachment in your original email, please do not send this attachment to the mailing list.)

As stated in the abstract, this HOWTO is meant for everybody interested in KDE translation. It is not taken for granted that such people are at the same time developers, "geeks", or that they know the ins and outs of all this stuff anyway and just want to check if others are as smart as they are. ;-) On the contrary, translation can be one of the fields for non-programmers and non-techs to contribute to the KDE project if they would like to.

Areas covered are the introduction of new languages to KDE, the resources available, translation of the graphic user interface (GUI) and of the documentation (which provides the bulk of the on-line help). The translation of the KDE web sites, handling of bug reports and user feedback are described to some extent.

We do not try to define exactly what is meant by the terms "i18n" (short for "internationalization") or "l10n" (short for "localization"), much less to stick to such definitions throughout the document, especially that those two terms were used wrongly in KDE for a long time. In theory "i18n" means to prepare code to allow it to be internationalized, i.e. to be translated, to show correct date forms, to write in the correct text direction and other such important stuff for the user. In theory "l10n" means the data for a specific country or language (translations, flags, date format, etc.) In KDE, "l10n" was more country-related, while "i18n" was more language-related. This wrong use of the terms have been fixed in the meanwhile, but it may still be present in one or another KDE document or name (e.g. the name of the kde-i18n-doc mailing list). (For a short explanation of the original meaning and the development side of both terms take a look at techbase.kde.org/Development/Tutorials/Localization.)

This HOWTO is mostly a "quick start" type of document and can, therefore, only serve as an initial overview of what is required for practical translation work. It cannot provide a thorough explanation of areas as complex as, for instance, Unicode or the inner workings of DocBook as used in KDE documentation. You can address the translation team via sending e-mail to its mailing list for subjects of general interest, namely kde-i18n-doc@kde.org. For things related to documentation writing there is another list: kde-doc-english@kde.org.

Since I have been asked about this: Everyone who feels like it, is invited to translate this document for the use of an individual language team. Please feel free to replace the German translation examples with your own ones and to add whatever you think could be useful for your team or to skip what does not make sense in your context. But since all things KDE are changing rapidly, please always make sure that you are using the latest DocBook source of the HOWTO for such translations. Major revisions will be announced on the translators' and documenters' mailing list at kde-i18n-doc@kde.org. Also probably, issues and errata about this document will appear there before being incorporated into this document.

This document is more written for somebody wanting to become the coordinator of a new language in KDE. If your goal is simply knowing how to translate in KDE, the document will be more tedious to read and to use, unfortunately, even if it is currently probably the best document to know how to translate for KDE.

Having said all that, constructive feedback or contributions are highly welcome, of course. Send an email to kde-i18n-doc@kde.org and tell what you would like to see in here.

For language coordinators, new and existing

Bringing a New Language to KDE

Handling Bug Reports

Web Site Translation and Design

For translators

GUI Translation

Doc Translation

Website Translation

Appendices

Mailing Lists

The l10n-kf5 Modules

Tools and Resources for KDE Translators

Where to find the answers on l10n.kde.org maintenance questions?

l10n.kde.org maintainers are part of the regular i18n team so mailing the list should be enough to get an answer, if for some reason they take too long to answer you can contact the KDE system administrators using the webform.

(Information in this section thanks to Albert Astals Cid.)

Thomas Diehl's Acknowledgements

The following acknowledgments are the ones of the first author of this document: Thomas Diehl.

The errors in this document are mine, of course. What is usable is mostly due to people in the KDE project who explained this stuff to me. I would like to thank all of them here. Special credit goes to:

Juraj Bednar, i18n coordinator (and sometimes co-coordinator;) who introduced me to KDE translation with incredible patience and an often even more incredible sense of humor
Tobias Burnus, former webmaster of i18n.kde.org and original author of all the statistic pages and archives most translators can hardly live without: thanks for a lot of assistance with all the technical issues in this area
Matthias Kiefer, Developer of KBabel, kdedict, documentation guru of the German team, main source for Emacs settings, and always lending a helpful hand with translation issues
Christopher Kuhi who produced most of the chapter on GUI translation from a German HOWTO on this subject (and is going to be checking everything for grammar and spelling mistakes ;-)
Stephan Kulow, grandmaster of the CVS, maker of the groundwork for almost all things having to do with KDE translation, spiritus rector for both the i18n and the documentation teams and mediator between techs and non-techs: thanks for all his good advice with the many problems that I (as a non-programmer) always have with KDE programming issues
Frank Schütte rewrote the part on doc translation after the transition to the PO format for translation of documentation.

Authors

Thomas Diehl
Nicolas Goutte
Frank Schütte: Rewrite of the doc-translation part
Arash Zeini: Update of the GUI-translation part
Yuri Chornoivan: Update to KDE 4

Article contributed by Yuri Chornoivan, Nicolas Goutte, and 1999-2002 Thomas Diehl thd@kde.org under the GFDL-1.2-or-later license.