Translating Pysycache

The DoudouLinux website contains a lot of useful information about translation job in a dedicated section. However, sometimes translators will find that there is no .pot file in the source code of an application, nor .po nor .mo files either. This is the case of Pysycache application.

Translating Pysycache

Fortunately, a brief walk through the source files unveiled what a translator has to do. The folder involved is “lang/”, the path in source files being the following:

…/pysycache-3.1.orig/pysycache/lang/

In this folder there are locales for languages already translated, in the form of ll_LL folders (e.g. for Romanian of country Romania, ro_RO). Inside these folders there are some text files, in pure .txt format and some sound files, in .ogg format.

All you have to do is to replicate the en_EN folder (copying it), and renaming according to your locale country/language code. Inside the new folder do not rename the files! Only translate all .txt files and record the local version of .ogg files. This way, the program internals will be able to load your translated files and use them properly.

NB Pair YES=Equivalent_of_Yes_in_your_language should be added manually in the beginning of textes.txt.

The audio files are not so many, so recording can be done easily. If your microphone does not produce a high quality sound or if you cannot find one near you, you can use a cell phone, almost all recent models have an utility for voice recording. The file format produced this way is not .ogg, but .mp3, .wav or even .amr. It can be converted using VLC, to be not so tech-savvy. Move your files through bluetooth or cable into your computer, in the translation folder, convert them into .ogg and rename them to the original English voice file names (of course, you must delete these English files from your translated locale folder).

Hoping the information was presented in an understandable form, we invite you to help us translating Pysycache and all other applications included in DoudouLinux.

Testing your translations

You can easily test your Pysycache translation in a running DoudouLinux box. You just need to copy the right files into the right place into the DoudouLinux system. We are using this method to add missing translation in the CD. The only “difficulty” if you are not familiar to Linux systems, is that you need to act as the system administrator do be allowed to change some system files. In the system, translation files for Pysycache are located in the following directory:

/usr/share/games/pysycache/lang/

So you just have to:

• plug an USB key with your own files that you have copied on it before
• open the file browser (Logo+E keys)
• navigate to your USB folder
• get its full path (something like /media/DeviceName/…/ll_LL)
• open the console (Logo+T keys)
• copy files with a single command
• start Pysycache for testing

The command to be typed is the following:

sudo cp -a /media/DeviceName/…/ll_LL/ /usr/share/games/pysycache/lang/

Be sure to type the real path of your work instead of /media/DeviceName/…/ll_LL! NB: you don’t need to set data persistence for this job except if you don’t want your files to disappear from DoudouLinux at shutdown.

You’re done!