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. Edit the file contribdjangodjangosettings.py (or bindjangosettings.py in the binary Windows installation). Add the language code and description to the variable LANGUAGES:

    LANGUAGES = (
      ('nl', ugettext('Dutch')),
      ('en', ugettext('English')),
      ('fr', ugettext('French')),
      ('it', ugettext('Italian')),
      ('zh-tw', ugettext('Traditional Chinese')),
      )
    
  2. Install an editor for gettext catalogs (.po files).

    Highly recommended is the poedit tool, which can be downloaded from http://www.poedit.net/

  3. Copy the directory contribdjangofreppledblocaleen to a new subdirectory with the name of your language code.

    The possible language codes can be found on http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/struct/dirlang.html#langcodes

  4. Use poedit to open the files django.po and djangojs.po in the directories you just copied. There are around 500 strings to be translated, which should take about half a day’s work.

    Some words already have been translated by the Django project. A comment marks those and you should not translate those. If you do translate them we’ll strip those out anyway when merging your translations.

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

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

  6. The installer also needs updating to recognize the new language.

    The files contribinstallerparameters.ini and contribinstallerfrepple.nsi need straightforward editing.