converse-built/docs/source/translations.rst

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============
Translations
============

Converse supports localization of its user interface and date formats. As
of writing, 17 languages are supported.

The translations of Converse can be found in the `locale
<https://github.com/jcbrand/converse.js/tree/master/locale>`_ directory.

Translations of Converse are very welcome. You can add translations either
manually by editing the ``.po`` files in the above-mentioned ``locale``
directory, or through the web at `weblate <https://hosted.weblate.org/projects/conversejs/#languages>`_.

As of version 3.3.0, Converse no longer automatically bundles translations
in its source file and instead fetches only the relevant locale for the current
session from a URL as specified by the :ref:`assets_path` setting.

There are three configuration settings relevant to translations and
localisation. You're encouraged to read the documentation for each of them.

* :ref:`i18n`
* :ref:`locales`
* :ref:`assets_path`

Manually updating translations
==============================

If you simply want to add a few missing translations, then consider doing it
through the web at `weblate <https://hosted.weblate.org/projects/conversejs/#languages>`_.

Some things however cannot be done via weblate and instead have to be done
manually in a checkout of the Converse source repository.

These tasks are documented below.

Updating the translations template (.pot file)
----------------------------------------------

The gettext `.pot` file located in
`./locale/converse.pot <https://github.com/jcbrand/converse.js/blob/master/locale/converse.pot>`_
is the template containing all translations and from which for each language an individual PO
file is generated.

The `.pot` file contains all translateable strings extracted from Converse.

To make a user-facing string translateable, wrap it in the double underscore helper
function like so:

.. code-block:: javascript

    __('This string will be translated at runtime');

After adding the string, you'll need to regenerate the POT file:

::

    make pot

Making translations file for a new language
-------------------------------------------

To create a new translations file for a language in which Converse is not yet
translated into, do the following

.. note:: In this example we use Polish (pl), you need to substitute 'pl' to your own language's code.

::

    mkdir -p ./locale/pl/LC_MESSAGES
    msginit -i ./locale/converse.pot -o ./locale/pl/LC_MESSAGES/converse.po -l pl

Please make sure to add the following attributes at the top of the file (under
*Content-Transfer-Encoding*). They are required as configuration settings for Jed,
the JavaScript translations library that we're using.

.. code-block:: po

    "domain: converse\n"
    "lang: pl\n"
    "Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8\n"
    "plural_forms: nplurals=2; plural=(n != 1);\n"

Updating an existing translations file
--------------------------------------

You can update the `.po` file for a specific language by doing the following:

.. note:: In this example we use German (de), you need to substitute 'de' to your own language's code.

::

    msgmerge ./locale/de/LC_MESSAGES/converse.po ./locale/converse.pot -U

To do this for ALL languages, run:

::

    make po

The resulting `.po` file is then what gets translated.

Generating a JSON file from a translations file
-----------------------------------------------

Unfortunately `Jed <http://slexaxton.github.io/Jed>`_, which we use for
translations in Converse cannot use the `.po` files directly. We have
to generate from it a file in JSON format and then put that in a `.js` file
for the specific language.

To generate JSON from a PO file, you'll need po2json for node.js. Run the
following command to install it (npm being the node.js package manager):

::

    npm install po2json

You can then convert the translations into JSON format:

::

    po2json -p -f jed -d converse locale/de/LC_MESSAGES/converse.po locale/de/LC_MESSAGES/converse.json

To do this for ALL languages, run:

::

    make po2json


.. note::
    If you are adding translations for a new language that is not already supported,
    you'll have to add the language path in main.js and make one more edit in ./src/locales.js
    to make sure the language is loaded by require.js.


Making sure the JSON file will get loaded
------------------------------------------

Finally, make sure that the language code is added to the list of default
values for the ``locales`` config setting.

This is done in ``src/converse-core.js``.

Look for the following section:

.. code-block:: javascript

        // Default configuration values
        // ----------------------------
        this.default_settings = {
            // ... Omitted for brevity
            locales_url: 'locale/{{{locale}}}/LC_MESSAGES/converse.json',
            locales: [
                'af', 'ar', 'bg', 'ca', 'de', 'es', 'en', 'fr', 'he',
                'hu', 'id', 'it', 'ja', 'nb', 'nl',
                'pl', 'pt_BR', 'ru', 'tr', 'uk', 'zh_CN', 'zh_TW'
            ],
            // ... Omitted for brevity
        };