Notes on the GNU Translation Project
************************************

GNU is going international!  The GNU Translation Project is a way to get maintainers, translators and users all together, so GNU will gradually become able to speak many native languages.  A few packages already provide native language translation for their messages.

If you found this ABOUT-NLS file inside a GNU distribution, you may assume that the distributed package does use GNU gettext internally, itself available at your nearest GNU archive site. But you do not need to install GNU gettext prior to configuring, installing or using this package with messages translated.

Installers will find here some useful hints.  These notes also explain how users should proceed for getting the programs to use the available translations.  They tell how people wanting to contribute and work at translations should contact the appropriate team.

When reporting bugs in the intl/ directory or bugs which may be related to internationalization, you should tell about the version of gettext which is used.  The information can be found in the intl/VERSION file, in internationalized packages.

One advise in advance
=====================

If you want to exploit the full power of the GNU gettext package you should configure it using

             --with-gnu-gettext.

No existing implementation at this point provides so many useful features (such as locale alias or message inheritance).  It is also not possible to provide this additional functionality on top of a catgets implementation.

Future versions of GNU gettext will very likely provide even more functionality.  So it might be a good idea to change to GNU gettext as soon as possible.

INSTALL Matters
===============

Some GNU packages are localizable when properly installed; the programs they contain can be made to speak your own native language. Most such packages use GNU gettext.  Other packages have their own ways to internationalization, predating GNU gettext.

By default, this package will be installed to allow translation of messages.  It will automatically detect whether the system provides usable catgets or gettext functions.  If neither is available, the GNU gettext own library will be used. However, installers may use special options at configuration time for changing this behaviour.  The commands:

     ./configure --with-gnu-gettext
     ./configure --disable-nls

will respectively bypass system catgets or gettext to use GNU gettext, or else, totally disable translation of messages.

When you already have GNU gettext installed on your system and run configure without an option for your new package, configure will probably detect the previously built and installed libintl.a file and will decide to use this.  This might be not what is desirable.  You should use the more recent version of the GNU gettext library. I.e. if the file intl/VERSION shows that the library which comes with this package is more recent, you should use

     ./configure --with-gnu-gettext

to prevent auto-detection.

Internationalized packages have usually many po/LL.po files, where LL gives an ISO 639 two-letter code identifying the language.  Unless translations are disabled, all those available are installed together with the package.  However, the environment variable LINGUAS may be set, prior to configuration, to limit the installed set.  LINGUAS should then contain a space separated list of two-letter codes, stating which languages are allowed.

Using This Package
==================

As a user, if your language has been installed for this package, you only have to set the LANG environment variable to the appropriate ISO 639 LL two-letter code prior to using the programs in the package.  For example, let's suppose that you speak German.  At the shell prompt, merely execute setenv LANG de (in csh) or export LANG; LANG=de (in sh).  This can be done from your .login or .profile file, once and for all.  Packages which are not internationalized will merely ignore the setting of this variable.

Translating Teams
=================

The GNU gettext tool set contains everything maintainers need for internationalizing their packages for messages.  It also contains quite useful tools for helping translators at localizing messages to their native language, once a package has already been internationalized.

To achieve the GNU Translation Project, we need many interested people who like their own language and write it well, and who are also able to synergize with other translators speaking the same language. Each translating team has its own mailing list, courtesy of Linux International.  You may reach your translating team at the address LL@li.org, replacing LL by the two-letter ISO 639 code for your language.  Language codes are not the same as country codes given in ISO 3166.  The following translating teams exist, as of November 1995:

     Chinese zh, Czech cs, Danish da, Dutch nl, English en, Esperanto eo, Finnish fi, French fr, Irish ga, German de, Greek el, Italian it, Japanese ja, Indonesian in, Norwegian no, Persian fa, Polish pl, Portuguese pt, Russian ru, Spanish es, Swedish sv, Telugu te and Turkish tr.

For example, you may reach the Chinese translating team by writing to zh@li.org.

If you'd like to volunteer to work at translating messages, you should become a member of the translating team for your own language. The subscribing address is not the same as the list itself, it has -request appended.  For example, Swedish people can send a message to sv-request@li.org, having this message body:

     subscribe

Keep in mind that team members should be interested in working at translations, or at solving translational difficulties, rather than merely lurking around.  If your team does not exist yet and you want to start one, please write to gnu-translation@prep.ai.mit.edu; you will then reach the GNU coordinator for all translator teams.

The English team is special.  It works at improving and uniformizing the terminology used in GNU.  Proven linguistic skill are praised more than programming skill, here.  For the time being, please avoid subscribing to the English team unless explicitely invited to do so.

Available Packages
==================

Languages are not equally supported in all GNU packages.  The following matrix shows the current state of GNU internationalization, as of November 1995.  Listed are: internationalized packages, and languages for which work is in progress, or about to start.

          See note    cs de en fr it ja nl no pt sv
                \   .-------------------------------.
     chess      (1) |    X  /                    X  |
     clisp          |    X  X  X                    |
     diffutils  (2) |       /  .                    |
     fileutils      |    .  /                       |
     flex       (3) |       /  .                    |
     m4             |    -  /  -  -  .           -  |
     gettext        |    X  /  X           X     X  |
     ptx            |    -  /  -                 -  |
     recode         |    -  /  -        -     -     |
     sh-utils       |    .  /  .                    |
     sharutils      |    X  /  X     X  X     X  X  |
     tar            |    X  /  X           -  X  X  |
     textutils      |    .  /  .                    |
     wdiff          | -  -  /  -  -                 |
                    `-------------------------------'
                      cs de en fr it ja nl no pt sv

The interpretation legend and notes are:

/
     There is no PO file, this package merely defaults to this language.

.
     The effort of localizing this package has been undertaken by someone, or by a translating team, and work is, or should be in progress.

-
     A PO file for this package and this language is completed and is currently available in a pretest release, or is all ready for inclusion in the next release of this package.

X
     The localization of this package to this particular language is fully completed, and now distributed through an official release.

(1)
     This package is translated to specific languages by methods predating GNU gettext.  Translations are all kept on disk files, and sources contain numbers where one normally expects strings.

(2)
     This package is planned to switch to GNU gettext.  For the time being, it uses temporary means for internationalization.

(3)
     This package has its translatable strings marked, but does not use GNU gettext.  A convenience patch may be available separately.

If November 1995 seems to be old, you may fetch a more recent copy of this ABOUT-NLS file on most GNU archive sites.