All the .po files are in message catalog format and can be manipulated using Linux utilities like msgfmt
. For more information on msgfmt and other related utilities, refer to http://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/manual/html_node/gettext_toc.html.
You must adhere to the following rules when you localize the strings.
UTF-8
character set NOT the character set that corresponds to the language you are translating to. Irrespective of whether you are writing a German or a Japanese .po file, you must use the UTF-8
character set NOT the utf-8
or the SHIFT-JIS
character set. If you do not have text editors capable of saving files in UTF-8, manually convert the .po file to UTF-8 by running the following command:msgconv -t UTF-8 -o
<new_file>.po
<source_file>.po
where
<new_file> is the name of the .po file converted to the UTF-8 character set
<source_file> is the original .po file (en_US locale)
For example, translating the English string:
"
%(name)s, please "
to French as
"
%(nom)s, s’il vous plait "
would be incorrect. The English string
"
%(name)s, please "
should be translated to French as:
"
%(name)s, s’il vous plait "