Localisation

Localisation is in general the process of providing a Software with a multiple language user interface. In FreeCAD you can set the language of the user interface under Edit→Preferences→Application. FreeCAD uses Qt to enable multiple language support. On Unix/Linux systems, FreeCAD uses the current locale settings of your system by default.

Helping to translate FreeCAD
One of the very important things you can do for FreeCAD if you are not a programmer, is to help to translate the program in your language. To do so is now easier than ever, with the use of the Crowdin collaborative on-line translation system.

How to Translate

 * Go to the FreeCAD translation project page on Crowdin;
 * Login by creating a new profile, or using a third-party account like your GMail address;
 * Click on the language you wish to work on;
 * Start translating by clicking on the Translate button next to one of the files. For example, FreeCAD.ts contains the text strings for the FreeCAD main GUI.
 * You can vote for existing translations, or you can create your own.

Note: If you are actively taking part in translating FreeCAD and want to be informed before next release is ready to be launched, so there is time to review your translation, please subscribe to this issue: http://www.freecadweb.org/tracker/view.php?id=137

Preparing your FreeCAD/master modules for translation
These are the parts to the FreeCAD translation process:
 * extract text strings from source code into *.ts files
 * load *.ts files into FreeCAD Crowdin.
 * translation of strings within Crowdin
 * extract modified/new *.ts files from Crowdin
 * convert *.ts files into *.qm files and update each module's *.qrc file
 * update FreeCAD master

All of the above steps are performed by the "translation scripts" which are run by an administrator periodically.

Preparing your module for translation is quite easy. First, you need to ensure that you have a "translations" directory in myModule/Gui/Resources. Then open a terminal window (or Windows/OSX equivalent) in your "translations" directory and enter the following command:

This creates an empty translation file. Once this is done, you need to ensure that the translation scripts are updated as in this pull request.

Everything after this is automatic as far as a developer is concerned. The administrator will extract the text strings, the translators will translate them, then the administrator will extract the translations and update FreeCAD/master.

Preparing your 3rd party module or macro for translation
3rd party modules or macros are translated in much the same fashion, except that you must do some of the work yourself. This forum discussion describes the details.

Older module translation techniques
Localization Older Methods describes the use of translation tools such as Qt Linguist, lupdate, lrelease, pylupdate4, etc in detail. Most of this is no longer required for FreeCAD/master modules, but may be helpful preparing and updating 3rd party modules.

Translating the wiki
This wiki is hosting a lot of contents, the majority of which build up the manual. You can browse the documentation starting from the Main Page, or have a look at the User's manual Online Help Toc.

Translation plugin
When the Wiki moved away from SourceForge, Yorik installed a Translation plugin which allows to ease translations between pages. For example, the page title can now be translated. Other advantages of the Translation plugin are that it keeps track of translations, notifies if the original page has been updated, and maintains translations in sync with the original English page.

The tool is documented in Extension:Translate, and is part of a Language Extension Bundle.

To quickly get started on preparing a page for translation and activating the plugin, please read the Page translation example.

To see an example of how the Translation tool works once the translation plugin is activated on a page, you can visit the Main Page. You will see a new language menu bar at the bottom. It is automatically generated. Click for instance on the German link, it will get you to Main Page/de. Right under the title, you can read "This page is a translated version of a page Main Page and the translation is xx% complete." (xx being the actual percentage of translation). Click on the "translated version" link to start translation, or to update or correct the existing translation.

You will notice that you cannot directly edit a page anymore once it's been marked as a translation. You have to go through the translation utility.

When adding new content, the English page should be created first, then translated into another language. If someone wants to change/add content in a page, he should do the English one first.

It is recommended to have basic knowledge of wiki style formatting and general guidelines of the FreeCAD wiki, because you will have to deal with some tags while translating. You can find this information on WikiPages.

The sidebar (navigation menu on the left) is also translatable. Please follow dedicated instructions on Localisation Sidebar page.

'''REMARK: The first time you switch a page to the new translation system, it looses all its old 'manual' translations. To recover the translation, you need to open an earlier version from the history, and copy/paste manually the paragraphs to the new translation system.'''

Remark: to be able to translate in the wiki, you must of course gain wiki edit permission.

If you are unsure how to proceed, don't hesitate to ask for help in the forum.