Introduction
You can help translating KMess to your local language! It isn't difficult either. We appreciate the effort.
To translate KMess, you need Lokalize or KBabel. They can both be obtained by installing the "kdesdk" KDE package; your distribution may also ship them separately.
You will also need to have the latest KMess version installed. You can also install KMess using the source package, of course, as long it's the latest version. An even better option is compiling KMess from SVN, because you'll get the up-to-the-minute translations along with the newest code - but at the possible expense of stability (SVN contains our development version).
Note: KDE has a lot of resources on localization, you may want to also read them!
Current status of translations
The current status of the translations is given in the diagram below. It's updated daily, automatically.
Translating
Each translation has a separate file in the folder kmess/po, named after it: it.po is the Italian translation file, for example. The kmess.pot file is a file you'll only need if you're translating KMess to a previously unsupported language (see below, at "New translations"). The .pot and .po files can both be opened in KBabel or Lokalize for translation.
A translation file for a certaing language is a collection of English phrases ("messages"), each of which has to get translated to another one in the language of the file. In the translation application, you'll usually find two fields, one with the English text, and one with its already translated or missing translation. You should go through all translated strings of text, to verify that they are still coherent with the original (which may have changed from the last translation) and to add ones which may eventually be missing.
Fuzzy messages
While you're translating the messages in the file, you'll likely find messages marked as "fuzzy". If a message is fuzzy it means the original text has changed, and an automated script has tried to generate a proper translation, to help you improve the translation process. Fuzzy messages won't be displayed in the application unless they're changed or approved (which removes the "fuzzy" flag from that message).
New translations
If a .po file for your language doesn't exist yet in the po/ directory within your KMess' source, copy the kmess.pot to a new file, named your-language-code.po. This page reveals which language code you should use. After you've created the new .po file, run the following command:
touch kmess/po/CMakeLists.txt
Testing
Of course, the translation needs to be tested. Run these commands in the source package or the SVN source directory:
./configure cd build/po make make install
This does not install KMess, but only installs the new translations. The configure script needs to run only once. To test the translation again, you can skip the first step. Just run make and make install from the build/po folder.
You can test the translation now. Run KMess, open the settings dialog, start a chat, etc.. To test another translation, run KMess with this command:
KDE_LANG="language-code" kmess
Submitting
Finally send the translation to us! :-) Either post it at the forums as an attachment to your post, or send the new translation by e-mail to "translations" (at) "kmess.org".
