Creating a localization

Why create a localization?

Of course everybody prefers to use a program using their own language. Therefore localizations for each language are required. As LMMS isn't available in all common languages yet, there's still a need for people creating or just improving translations of LMMS. If you're sure, there's no translation for your language yet, you can start up by creating a new one. The following short article will guide you through the process of creating a translation.

How to create a translation

First checkout a recent (stable) version of LMMS from Git repository. Afterwards you need to create a new empty file called "XX.ts" where XX are two characters identifying your localization, e.g. de for Germany, fr for France, it for Italy and so on. Example:

 touch data/locale/de.ts

In the next step we actually create the localization file:

 mkdir build
 cd build
 cmake ..
 make XX.ts
 cd ..

Now look into directory "data/locale" where you should find the according ts-file. You can open this file using Qt4 Linguist, which is usually part of Qt4-development-packages. The usage of Qt4 Linguist doesn't require any explanations as you just have to translate the current string and hit <enter></enter> to process next one. Do not translate sentences if you're not sure how to translate them! Often it's more clear to people reading the English string. It isn't bad at all if your translation is not complete yet. One day someone else will add the missing translations.

After you're done with Qt Linguist, it's time to integrate your translation into LMMS. Either directly send the maintainer an email and attach your ts-file or do the following: open the "file"-menu in Qt Linguist and select "release". Qt Linguist automatically fills in the correct output filename, so just click on "OK" and that's all. All you have to do now is running

 make install

for installing LMMS to an appropriate location. Then run it and it should speak your language ;-) If not either your locale environment variable is incorrect or you did something wrong at another place. So if you can't figure it out, send the maintainer your ts-file and very soon you'll be able to checkout a version of LMMS containing also your translation ;-)

Currently supported languages

1. Catalan
2. Czech
3. Dutch
4. English
5. Farsi
6. French
7. German
8. Italian
9. Japanese
10. Korean
11. Polish
12. Portuguese (Brazilian)
13. Russian
14. Spanish
15. Swedish
16. Ukrainian

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