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# Add a Qtopia Translation

- Introduction
- What to do
  - Install Qt 3
  - Getting Started Translating
  - Translating Qtopia
  - Language description
  - Finishing up

## Introduction

Adding a translation for Qtopia is easy. There are a few steps you will need to take in order to successfully translate Qtopia into your chosen language.

1. Install Qt 3.x, which includes linguist, lupdate and lrelease.
2. Run lupdate and lrelease, and start using Trolltech's linguist
3. Translate the strings using the Linguist tool
4. Add language description
5. Create an ipkg

## What to do

### Install Qt 3

You can either install Qt 3 for X11, from your linux distribution, or download the Qt 3 source, and compile it yourself. Once installed, you should have linguist, lupdate and lrelease tools available for you to use.

### Getting Started Translating

The first step is to run the commands `make lupdate`, and `make lrelease` in the Qtopia source ( $QPEDIR/src ) directory. This makes sure all the files necessary for translation are up to date.
You should not need to do this if you are using the Qtopia source tarball, and have not done any customizing.

### Translating Qtopia

Linguist Manual

The next step is to run linguist tool. Anyone can participate in this part of translating Qtopia. Linguist makes it easy to help with translations.

### Language description

Running the command `make lupdate` will create the directory $QPEDIR/i18n/`<new lang>` and server specific translation files (e.g. QtopiaApplications.ts which contains the translated names for Qtopia applications). In addition to these automatically generated files every language needs a `.directory` file. For example, the German `.directory` in $QPEDIR/i18n/de begins with:

    [Translation]
    File=QtopiaI18N
    Context=German
    [Desktop Entry]
    Name[]=German

This file has to be added manually after `make lupdate` has been issued for the first time.

### Finishing up

Once you are finished translating all the strings, you can create an ipkg.

Note: For some languages (e.g Chinese or Japanese) it may be necessary to install additional font files in $QPEDIR/lib/fonts in order to present the translated strings.