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Translation

Translation is the most time and resource consuming aspect of the OpenOffice.org localization considering that the GUI counts approx. 120,000 words and the online Help more than 400,000. But it is not only a question of large volume of words that need to be translated, it is mostly a question of accurate translation that need to be performed in order to make sure that the users can easily work with the application.

In this section you will find information on:

How to Translate Software and Help Messages

First of all, it is important to verify at http://l10n.openoffice.org/languages.html if there is a native language community for the language you are interested in. In case your language is listed, you should get in contact with the native language community to join the language project and offer your contributions.

In case your language is NOT listed, you'll definitively need to add your language before you are able to extract the files and translate them. With an email to the dev@l10n.openoffice.org list, please signal that you would like to start a new language project.

Before starting translating the files, we recommend to read some tips on how to proceed. The OOo community usually use the PO file format for translation, see this document for a small introduction into the used process http://www.khmeros.info/tools/oo2.0_program_translation.html

Terminology Management - SunGloss

If you want to search for terminology, you can do that with SunGloss. Sun Gloss is the glossary tool that is being used at Sun for terminology management. With this tool you can search for English terms and their translations directly, or customize and export glossaries for offline use. Sun Gloss is also open for external users. Visit https://g11nportal.sun.com/sungloss to request an account and get access now!

Open Translation Website

This web site is structured in a way that enables anyone (regardless the target language) to use the information on tools and processes provided for their language projects in order to produce a proper translation.

The web site is hosted by the Sun Developer Network (SDN) under our Software Globalization Technical Topic. Now, the users and developers all over the world can use the translation tools and get translation guidelines and advice. This is the contribution from TLIS Language Leads towards Sun's involvement in sharing and participation.

Open Translation is located at http://developers.sun.com/techtopics/global/technology/translation/

Additional Tools and Reference Materials

XML Locale Generator for OOo 2.0.x http://www.it46.se/localegen

Kichapa a multi-lingual search engine http://www.it46.se/kichapa

Kipot, a glossary development panel http://www.it46.se/kipot


How to Translate Templates and Autotexts