How-to

If you’re fluent in a language other than English, and have some spare time, you can help us translate Quod Libet. Translation is a continuous process on an active projects like this - as developers add new features or modify existing text used, new translations will be needed. Many of the translations files are missing a lot of strings, so please try the trunk version in your language.

Of course, there might be mistakes in the English, too! Please let us know if you find them.

Translation Software

To translate, you’ll want to have gettext and git installed:

apt-get install gettext git

For translating itself you need a PO editor like Poedit:

apt-get install poedit

Translation Process

Get the QL code:

$ git clone https://github.com/quodlibet/quodlibet.git quodlibet
$ cd quodlibet/quodlibet

To translate the last release, update to the stable branch:

$ git branch -a  # to get the list of branches
$ git checkout quodlibet-X.X # for example: quodlibet-3.3

To translate current trunk, update to the default branch:

$ git checkout master

You can find the translation file for your chosen language in:

./po/<lang>.po

In case there’s not already a translation for your language, create one:

$ ./setup.py create_po --lang=<mylang>

Update translations so all new strings that were added since the last translation update get included:

$ ./setup.py update_po --lang=<mylang>

Now start translating…

$ poedit ./po/<lang>.po

Test the translation by generating MO files and running Quod Libet and Ex Falso. build_mo will create a ‘build’ directory including the processed translations and if ‘build’ is present QL/EF will use these translations instead of the global ones.

$ ./setup.py build_mo --lang=<mylang>
$ ./quodlibet.py
$ ./exfalso.py

If your active system language is not the one you are translating, you can run them like:

$ LANG=<mylang> ./quodlibet.py

Finally run our unit tests to make sure the translation will not cause programming errors. If it says something else, there’s a problem with the translation.

$ ./setup.py test --to-run PO.<mylang>

And send us the .po file you made:

  • Create a pull request.
  • Or create a new issue linking to your updated .po file. If you don’t have a place for making the file accessible create a gist with the content of the .po file and include the gist URL in the issue description.