diffutils/LOCALIZE
1998-09-13 05:18:48 +00:00

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Localization
============
This software package can output messages in languages other than its
default (which is typically English). To operate in this way, you need
translation catalogs for the locales you want to support.
By convention, a locale's name is the lower-case two-letter ISO 639
code for the name of the locale's language. See
<ftp://ftp.uni-erlangen.de/pub/doc/ISO/ISO-639-summary> for a list of
language codes. Here are some example names of locales:
de German
en English
es Spanish
fr French
ja Japanese
ru Russian
zh Chinese
For a locale with territorial variants, an underscore and the
capitalized two-letter ISO 3166 territory code is appended to the
locale name. See <ftp://ftp.uni-erlangen.de/pub/doc/ISO/ISO-3166-summary>
for a list of territory codes. Here are some example names of locales
that are particular to territories:
de_CH German in Switzerland
en_UK English in the United Kingdom
en_US English in the United States
fr_BE French in Belgium
fr_CA French in Canada
fr_CH French in Switzerland
zh_TW Chinese in Taiwan
If the `message' directory does not have a translation catalog for your
locale L, you can write one by copying `message/template.po' to
`message3/L.po' and then editing each `msgstr' entry in the copy until
it is a faithful translation of the preceding `msgid' entry.
* You can omit a msgid-msgstr pair if the two entries are identical.
This is commen in en_* locales.
* Be careful about msgstr entries that contain `printf'-style formats,
e.g. "%s: invalid option -- %c\n"; your translations must have
formats for exactly the same arguments, otherwise the program may
behave incorrectly. Your C library should support formats like
`%2$s' to let you reorder the arguments; if not, your translations
must format the arguments in the same order as the originals.