Translation How-To

From Freeplane - free mind mapping and knowledge management software
Revision as of 19:40, 31 May 2010 by Jm34harvey (talk | contribs) (Undo revision 652 by Olivia (Talk) spam)

This page will give you all the information you need to translate Freeplane into your own language.

GUI translation (GUI means Graphical User Interface)

These are all the strings that show up in Freeplane, especially in menus and dialogs.

Instructions

  1. Download the Popeye translation tool
  2. Get the latest translation file from Freeplane translation table both for the reference (EN recommended) and for your language
  3. In Popeye : create a project and do the translation, see this Flash tutorial
  4. Check the completeness of your translation file using TransCheck
  5. You can now add the new translation on your current Freeplane installation : browse your Freeplane installation directory, create subfolders resources/translations and put your file there. Run Freeplane and check your translation
  6. Go to the tracker (requires Sourceforge log-in) and upload your file (the Project should be set to Translations).

You're done!

Frequently Asked Questions

Why are translation strings ending with "[translate me]" ? 
As long as a key is missing in a translation Freeplane automatically uses "<English text> [translate me]" as translation. Translators should search and translate these strings in priority and then remove "[translate me]".
Why are translation strings ending with "[auto]" ? 
We have an automatic translation tool that uses the Google translation engine to translate each remaining "[translate me]" strings for each language. Strings translated that way have an [auto] suffix. Translators should search and review these strings and then remove "[auto]".
Why is there sometimes space before values ? 
spaces before values are ignored, don't care.
Why is there & character before some values (sometimes "in" the words) ? 
the ampersand (&) is used to mark keys in the menu (i.e. open the menu, press the key/letter to activate the menu entry) - while translating, you need to make sure that each letter is only used once per menu.
Some values begins by <html> with no </html> at the end ? 
Java accepts unclosed tags - don't care.
Some key are not used / displayed in the software 
you should stay aligned with the English version to be on the safe side, but if keys are not used, it's a bug you can/should report.
Some key are in double like icon_clock or icon_clock2 or icon_user_icon hence I removed them 
removing one of the duplicate keys is the right decision.

Tips for translators

Your translation is truncated 
If your translation is truncated when displayed, it may contains a ' character (e.g. Freeplane displays "Copier l" instead of "Copier l'identifiant"), you may simply enter the ' character twice (ie "Copier l"identifiant") as translation where " is twice the character '.

Documentation map translation

This is the map mind you get when you press the <F1> key or use the menu point Help → Documentation.

Instructions

  1. Download the latest version of freeplane.mm and FP_MenuReference.mm (and an already existing versions in your language) from the Bazaar repository.
  2. Visit pages http://freeplane.sourceforge.net/doc/freeplane_all_languages.html and http://freeplane.sourceforge.net/doc/FP_MenuReference_all_languages.html to see how the documentation is translated by Google Translate.
  3. Using the latest development version of Freeplane, just create a map in your language (or complete the one already existing).
    • As it's almost impossible to track differences between maps and ensure an exact one to one relationship between the languages, we don't expect this from translators.
    • To track changes of freeplane.mm filters can be useful: Open the file in normal mindmap mode (not via F1) and apply a "Date filter" with the modification time set to the last time you have edited the translated map.
    • Just make sure that the map is consistent with the current version of Freeplane, as complete as possible and helpful to users.
  4. Go to the tracker (requires Sourceforge log-in) and upload your map (the Project should be set to Translations).

Keys Mapping translation

TBD

Java Help translation

TBD (the current version doesn't allow for localization). Hint for later: http://jhelpdev.sourceforge.net/

Wiki and other documentation translation

TBD