Translating:Offline

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This is a help page for users that want to work on translations offline.

In Special:Translate you can export a message group to a .po/gettext file, and work on that offline. You can upload/import your translations if you have "offline translator rights" (you can make a request for those after you have proven to be a reliable online translator). For first time submissions, please compress your gettext file and e-mail it to "translatewiki AT xs4all DOT nl" referencing your translatewiki.net user name. Your first submission will be imported by a staff member.

WARNING: make sure you are using POedit version 1.4.2 if you are using that package, otherwise "msgctxt" lines will be dropped and your work cannot be processed.

Ensure your gettext editor at least also keeps the following meta data field in the file header intact - versions, dates and languages may of course differ:

"X-Generator: MediaWiki Translate extension 2009-01-25\n"
"X-Language-Code: nl\n"
"X-Message-Group: ext-abc\n"

Clicking a link below will give you a .po/gettext file download for your language as set in Special:Preferences. This file has a UTF-8 encoding.

• MediaWiki - most often used core messages
• MediaWiki - all core messages
• Wikimedia extension messages
• MediaWiki - all extension messages

The above links are tailored to MediaWiki. On Special:LanguageStats you can go to any group, and select there "<translate-task-export-as-po>" to export to gettext.

There is no need to completely translate the file. Uploading partially translated message groups is perfectly fine. Download a new gettext file to continue your work after you have uploaded it. Do not continue working with your earlier downloaded file after uploading it!

NOTE: Consider that other users may be working on the same language you are. Please always upload your work within a day or two to avoid duplicate work!

Gettext Editors

POedit 

Available for all platforms supporting the wxWidgets toolkit, tested on Unix with GTK+ and Windows.
WARNING: make sure you are using version 1.4.2 or above, otherwise "msgctxt" lines will be dropped and your work cannot be processed.

gtranslator 

Can be used in the GNOME desktop environment on Unix and Linux platforms.

gted 

To be used as plugin in the Eclipse IDE on Linux, Windows and MAC OS X, has various tools integrated.

Lokalize 

Uses the KDE 4 Desktop Environment an all platforms supporting it. Has a user wiki and online handbook

Translate Toolkit 

Toolkit written in the python programming language which it needs installed, usable on all platforms. Supports several other file formats as well.

OmegaT 

Free tool for professional translators written in Java, requires Java installed, available on all platforms, supports a variety of other file formats, glosssaries, fuzzy matching, and translation memories.

Gorm PO file editor 

Small program, runs on Windows, no installation required.

Better PO Editor 

Available for Windows, BSD, Unix, Linux, Mac OS X. Includes spell checker and Google Translate suggestions.

Weblinks to additional resources

• Autotools Tutorial
• Gettext Commons - Java gettext utilities
• Okapi PO filter