Questions on translations

[Christian Stimming]

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Hi,

Bernie schrieb:
> I'm currently working on the Dutch translations of Gnucash 1.9.5 and making 
> lots of progress. 

Great. We are thankful for any contributions here.

I guess you have already noticed the existing Dutch translation (1700
translated), which notes Jeroen ten Berge <twinbit at home.nl> as last
translator. Can you please try to contact him (in case you didn't
already do so), so that you avoid duplicate work just in case he is also
working on the translation?

> Inside the po/glossary/ directory should be a "glossary" file for your 
> language. (...)
> ======
> If these strings are never visible to the user, then what is the purpose of 
> this file ??? How should this file be a guide or a tool to translating the 
> real .po file ??

Use it as a guide when translating the real .po file. If you don't see
why this could be helpful, I'd recommend reading some of the general
translation explanations around the Internet, e.g.
http://l10n.kde.org/docs/translation-howto/where-to-go.html which
suggests "Find standard translations for standard elements and stick to
them. The archived PO translations (also known as "compendium files") at
will be very helpful in this respect (...) Also make good use of word
lists and dictionaries, of web fora and mailing lists. " Glossary is
just another word for compendium file.

> 2) I see a lot of terms with an underscore left to a letter; apparently this 
> is to underline letters in menus for shortcuts using the Alt-button. How to 
> deal with these underscores when the dutch translation doesn't contain the 
> letter that is underlined in Enlish ?

The english string specifies both the text and its shortcut letter. The
translation can therefore also specify both the translated text and the
shortcut letter appropriate for the translated text. The translation can
choose any letter you consider appropriate; you are not restricted to
the original letter.

> 3) At the end of the .po file (from line 21122 on) there are a lot of terms 
> commented out with a hash # and without any description or reference to 
> source code above it, like:
> =====
> #~ msgid "_Commodity Editor"
> #~ msgstr "A_rtikelen bewerken"
> How to deal with these ?

What editor do you use for the po file? Only a text editor? I'd
recommend not to use that, but instead you should use one of the more
specialized po file editors. I recommend either emacs po-mode or kbabel.
 Either way, any of these documentations would have explained that these
are "obsolete" strings which are no longer being used. Please read
http://l10n.kde.org/docs/translation-howto/gui-step-by-step.html and
similar general explanations if you are quite new to the translation
process.

Christian
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