Translators
A group of volunteers is translating the free Audacity sound editor into many different languages. The translation effort is now focused exclusively on Audacity 1.3 Beta as we prepare it to be our next Stable Release. If you would like to help, please join the audacity-translation mailing list and introduce yourself. Please read the instructions below on how to start working on translations.
Resources for Translators
- Mailing list and archives
- Translating Audacity on the Audacity Wiki.
- Latest audacity.pot file (last updated 2009/11/08)
- Latest audacity_website.pot file (last updated 2009/11/26)
- wxWidgets i18n
- Audacity Beta User Manual - The Audacity Beta User Manual also requires translating. This is done online using Wiki software. To create an account and start translating, please contact Gale.
Translation Instructions (software and web site)
Normally there will already be a translation for your language of the Audacity software or web site, but often it needs to be updated for the latest changes. To update an existing translation, use the links below to download the .po file for your language:
On the "Log" page for your language, click the "download" link at the top, just to right of "Links to HEAD" (right-click or control-click and save the target or link if necessary).
If there is no .po file for your language, create one by downloading the latest "audacity.pot" or "audacity_website.pot" file under "Resources for Translators" above. (If the links only produce text in the browser, right-click or control-click and save the target or link). Rename the .pot to "audacity.po" (or "audacity_website.po" for web site translation) before starting your translation.
Programs for creating and editing .po files:
- poEdit for Windows and Unix.
- KBabel for KDE.
- GNU gettext is standard on most Unix systems. It includes a PO mode for the Emacs text editor.
Basic usage of poEdit:
- For a newly created .po file, set its properties by clicking Catalog > Settings and filling in the required information. Set the target language in the Language menu. Make sure to set the "charset" option correctly, otherwise poEdit will not save any translations with non-English characters.
- For an existing .po file, download "audacity.pot" or "audacity_website.pot" from "Resources for Translators" above. In poEdit, click Catalog > Update from POT file to update your .po file with the latest strings from the downloaded .pot file. Then translate the .po file (not the .pot file).
- When you File > Save, poEdit saves the .po file, plus a .mo file for use in Audacity.
To test a translation in Audacity:
- Navigate to the "Languages" directory inside the Audacity installation directory, and open the directory with the same name as your .po file. If creating a new translation, create a directory in the "Languages" folder using the correct language code from http://www.poedit.net/translations.php. For example, the code for Tamil is "ta", so create "Audacity\Languages\ta".
- Rename the saved .mo file to "Audacity.mo", and paste it into the directory you opened or created.
- Open Audacity and in Preferences: Interface, choose your language and click OK. You should now see your translations.
Further information:
- To submit a translation, please send the completed .po file to the audacity-translation mailing list. A member of Audacity Team will commit the file and send a message to the list confirming this.
- Please read Translating Audacity for more tips on translating the Audacity source code, and to learn how the Audacity software and web site are translated.
