Seems these folks in Nigeria have been busy translating various Free Software applications (including at least Ephy from the GNOME stable) into Yoruba (“yo”), Hausa (“ha”) and Igbo (“ig”).
Language Log claims it’s not free but I assume this means “you have to pay for it” rather than “it’s breaking the GPL”. So, maybe we can find someone who’s bought a copy and get the .po files from them and merge them upstream? LL claims it’s dormant, so we should make an effort to rescue the translations before they vanish forever.
Perhaps there is something in this hard drive image I found:
http://wazobialinux.com/downloads/wlce.hda.img.21.09.2006
By a copy, do you mean a copy of wazobia linux?
I think I might be able to find one. I tried it a few years back, but didn’t quite like it cos it was based on Fedora core 2 or so.
If I can lay my hands on a copy, you’ll just need to tell me where the PO files are so I can roll up a tarball and email it to you.
Additionally, perhaps I should start looking at translating some programs into my own language (Tiv: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiv) … I’ve always thought nobody cared :)
@nucco: that would be wonderful. (“tiv” is the ISO code, unsurprisingly.) Let me know if I can be any help with getting things set up.
The copy probably just has .mo files, the compiled form, but that’s fine because we can just un-compile them again.
To begin with, I can checkout an application (eg Rhythmbox), then copy any of the existing PO files over, and start replacing the translated strings, and eventually submit a patch, right?
@nucco: That’s the basic idea, but you can find a blank current .po file for any application by going to e.g. http://l10n.gnome.org/module/rhythmbox/ and clicking where it says “POT file” (POT = .po template). (Do the user interfaces before the user guides, though.) Then you can submit the first one and set yourself up as a translation team for Tiv: http://live.gnome.org/TranslationProject/StartingATeam
Just finished downloading the image. It contains a livecd like structure, including a squashfs image. I tarred up the /usr/share/locale/{yo,ha,ig} directories from inside the squashfs image, converted all the mo files to po files and uploaded it:
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=A9ABDUMC
http://www.wikiupload.com/download_page.php?id=81166
http://w15.easy-share.com/1702861563.html
BTW, it seems at least yo has some translations already, on my Debian lenny system:
$ find /usr/share/locale/{yo,ha,ig}
/usr/share/locale/yo
/usr/share/locale/yo/LC_MESSAGES
/usr/share/locale/yo/LC_MESSAGES/gnome-desktop-2.0.mo
find: `/usr/share/locale/ha’: No such file or directory
find: `/usr/share/locale/ig’: No such file or directory
@foo:
thanks so much. I’ve mailed the translation list about it:
http://mail.gnome.org/archives/gnome-i18n/2008-December/msg00071.html
You can see where Yoruba currently is upstream here:
http://l10n.gnome.org/languages/yo/
As you see it’s rather below 1% translated.
I’ve made some changes to a rhytmbox po file. How do I test this? I have rb source checked out of svn already…
1. Add “tiv” to po/LINGUAS
2. Put tiv.po in the po directory
3. In the base directory, ./autogen.sh –prefix /usr
4. make
5. make install
Let me know if there’s any problem with these, or you need a hand setting up the translation team.
(that’s hyphen hyphen prefix, not an em dash!)
he he. Rhythmbox does have an “–enable-uninstalled-build” option which allows you to run it without installing it. Furthermore, it refuses to install to a non-standard location.
I can replace the system supplied version if necessary, but won’t i need to set my system locale to “Tiv” or something for the application to appear localized? That’s what I don’t know how to do…
@nucco: do
LANG=tiv LC_ALL=tiv rhythmbox
I’m getting a Gtk and Gdk warning: locale not supported by C library, Using the fallback ‘C’ locale.
No strings appear translated in the application after it starts…
Perhaps I need to add “tiv” somewhere else on my system?
I already sent you an email on this, but well, I hope you don’t get offended by the double posting.
And pls bear with my ignorance on this subject .
@nucco:
I think a better place to ask this would be gnome-i18n-list, since people there know a lot more than I do about the locale system. You can subscribe here:
http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-i18n