The great worldwide interest in GRASS suggests value in translating GRASS messages to languages other than english. The "infrastructure" to support single-byte as well as multi-byte character sets was implemented (based on the FOSS4G efforts).

The GRASS Development Team is seeking translators. Please subscribe to the dedicated mailing list at

http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-translations

Translation related issues may be discussed there (how to start a new translation, how to merge old G5.0 translated messages into GRASS 6 etc). This is an opportunity for non-programmers to contribute as messages can be easily translated. No programming skills required!
In the links section at bottom of this page you find references to the 'kbabel' and 'poEdit' software to easily translate the message files. The use of a Web based interface is under consideration.

Wanted languages

Simple Chinese, Swahili, Hindi, Greek, Tamil, Russian, Telugu, Português, ... Please join us!

HOWTO

We have 4 types of .po files per language (see locale/po/):

grasslibs_LANG.po: messages from libraries
grassmods_LANG.po: messages from commands ("modules")
grasstcl_LANG.po: messages from TclTk graphical user interface
grasswxpy_LANG.po: messages from wxgrass/wxPython graphical user interface

Briefly, the steps to translate messages are (may be modified in future, more details in the README file linked below):

Get the latest development version from either the SVN repository or as SVN snapshot (see "Download" section) or download just existing .po files (see below) from SVN.
run: 'cd locale' to change into the translation directory
run: 'make pot' to create grass*.pot files (containing original messages)
run: 'make update-po' merge new messages into existing *.po files (or create new po files)
Now translate the messages in the po/*.po files (using kbabel or other editor)
run: 'make mo' create the mo files (binary translated message files)

Please, click here to see details (find the README in the locale/ directory as well):
Translation README

For terminology, please refer to the GRASS Translation Glossary.

To change to a certain LOCALE (if the system doesn't do it for you or for exploring other languages), do the following steps:

# 1. Define/check language settings:
   echo $LANG
   echo $LANGUAGE
   echo $LC_ALL

# 2. Change it (example for to Japanese):
# 2.a) bash shell:
       export LANG=ja_JP
       export LANGUAGE=ja_JP
       export LC_ALL=ja_JP

# 2.b) (t)csh shell:
       setenv LANG ja_JP
       setenv LANGUAGE ja_JP
       setenv LC_ALL ja_JP

Now launch GRASS 6 in this terminal. If you launch it from an icon, you have to change the LOCALE in the computer setup program instead.

Download of existing .po files for modification

Download current .po files from CVS (useful if you want to partecipate without compiling GRASS). Please announce your efforts on the 'GRASS translations' mailing list (see above) to avoid that work is doubled. To start a new language, you can simply rewrite an existing file. Take care to rename it properly and to update the language specific metadata.

Multi-byte FreeType/TrueType TTF support

A multilingual terminal emulator with multi-byte support is mlterm.
Using this terminal, GRASS 6 is already able to display e.g. Japanese fonts in SQL queries (here DBF file):

Tcl/TK TTF Support

Also the TclTK based graphical user interface renders TTF characters. Here an example for simple Chinese (the underlaying .po file is coded in UTF-8):

Here an example for Hindi (the underlaying .po file is coded in UTF-8):

Major parts of GRASS 6.2+ were translated to Vietnamese:

XDRIVER TTF Support

Recently the XDRIVER in GRASS was extended to support True/Free Type Fonts.

Links: .po file editors

kbabel: KBabel is a set of tools for editing and managing gettext PO files (should come with your Linux distibution)
poEdit: poEdit is cross-platform gettext catalogs (.po files) editor (works also under MS-Windows)

Statistics of current GRASS internationalization (i18N) status

The table is ordered by number of translated messages per language. The two character codes indicate the language, based on the Alpha-2 code of ISO 639-1. For download of a currently sleeping translation, please either get the file directly from the GRASS-CVS or see above.

GRASSLIBS

PO-Files Translated
messages Fuzzy
translations Untranslated
messages

Spanish grasslibs_es.po 818 9 1

Czech grasslibs_cs.po 774 49 5

Thai grasslibs_th.po 664 111 36

Portuguese grasslibs_pt.po 522 163 126

German grasslibs_de.po 499 227 102

Chinese grasslibs_zh.po 478 215 118

Turkish grasslibs_tr.po 452 99 260

Portuguese grasslibs_pt_br.po 375 189 247

Vietnamese grasslibs_vi.po 335 223 253

Italian grasslibs_it.po 333 224 254

French grasslibs_fr.po 302 251 258

Polish grasslibs_pl.po 278 208 331

Latvian grasslibs_lv.po 263 220 328

Slovenian grasslibs_sl.po 246 256 309

Arabic grasslibs_ar.po 170 218 423

Korean grasslibs_ko.po 42 95 674

Marathi grasslibs_mr.po 21 99 691

Hindi grasslibs_hi.po 2 434 375

Greek, Modern (1453-) grasslibs_el.po 0 811

Japanese grasslibs_ja.po 0 183 628

Russian grasslibs_ru.po 0 415 396

This table is generated weekly.

GRASSMODS

PO-Files Translated
messages Fuzzy
translations Untranslated
messages

Czech grassmods_cs.po 5461 39 11

Thai grassmods_th.po 5216 151 21

Spanish grassmods_es.po 5002 341 140

Turkish grassmods_tr.po 2674 120 2594

Vietnamese grassmods_vi.po 2637 2029 722

German grassmods_de.po 2597 1952 947

French grassmods_fr.po 2283 2177 928

Polish grassmods_pl.po 1658 1783 2030

Portuguese grassmods_pt.po 1549 2866 973

Portuguese grassmods_pt_br.po 1514 2902 972

Chinese grassmods_zh.po 967 2070 2351

Italian grassmods_it.po 909 2379 2606

Arabic grassmods_ar.po 526 2219 2643

Slovenian grassmods_sl.po 431 2364 2593

Latvian grassmods_lv.po 373 1847 3168

Marathi grassmods_mr.po 2 967 4419

Korean grassmods_ko.po 1 593 4794

Greek, Modern (1453-) grassmods_el.po 0 5388

Hindi grassmods_hi.po 0 3327 2061

Japanese grassmods_ja.po 0 2893 2495

Russian grassmods_ru.po 0 2150 3238

This table is generated weekly.

GRASSTCL

PO-Files Translated
messages Fuzzy
translations Untranslated
messages

Czech grasstcl_cs.po 1429

Thai grasstcl_th.po 1424 6 1

Spanish grasstcl_es.po 1422 2 5

Portuguese grasstcl_pt_br.po 1361 39 31

Italian grasstcl_it.po 1342 310 158

Portuguese grasstcl_pt.po 1191 162 78

Turkish grasstcl_tr.po 1126 3 302

French grasstcl_fr.po 794 268 369

German grasstcl_de.po 765 399 265

Polish grasstcl_pl.po 732 375 324

Vietnamese grasstcl_vi.po 726 420 285

Chinese grasstcl_zh.po 221 15 1195

Amharic grasstcl_am.po 174 80 1177

Slovenian grasstcl_sl.po 0 1431

Russian grasstcl_ru.po 0 187 1244

Korean grasstcl_ko.po 0 1431

Greek, Modern (1453-) grasstcl_el.po 0 1431

Arabic grasstcl_ar.po 0 1431

Hindi grasstcl_hi.po 0 1431

Japanese grasstcl_ja.po 0 667 764

Latvian grasstcl_lv.po 0 125 1306

Marathi grasstcl_mr.po 0 1431

This table is generated weekly.

GRASSWXPY

PO-Files Translated
messages Fuzzy
translations Untranslated
messages

German grasswxpy_de.po 434 443 245

Czech grasswxpy_cs.po 387 2

Spanish grasswxpy_es.po 20 1071

This table is generated weekly.
The relevant column is 'Translated messages' as the message files do not necessarily contain all available messages of GRASS.

Last change: $Date: 2008-05-05 01:00:30 -0700 (Mon, 05 May 2008) $
$Author: neteler $