Introduction

The following borrows heavily under the terms of the GPL v2 license from both the process and the text created by Scott Wallick for the Sandbox theme.

This page explains both how to use, and how to create and edit translations of the theme. Check with the mailing list or the tip of the code repository before you begin, to make sure that a translation for the same language/country pair is not in progress, and to ensure you're translating the most current theme text.

The preferred way to add or improve a Simplish translation is to create a new issue, then attach either your new .po and .mo files, or a patch(1) that adds or changes the appropriate files. See  issue #2  for an example. It is also OK to email a patch(1) or a .po file to the list.

Details

Using a provided translation

Existing localizations are included with stable releases of the Simplish theme. To use a provided translation, follow the general Wordpress instructions for setting your language. Once set for your Wordpress installation, the corresponding language as defined by xy_ZZ code will apply to displayed strings in Simplish as well.

Creating a new translation

1. Read the general Wordpress instructions at: http://codex.wordpress.org/Translating_WordPress
2. The file you need to translate is the file simplish/languages/simplish.pot. It is included in the Simplish distribution, but the latest version at http://simplish.googlecode.com/hg/languages/simplish.pot should be used to ensure localizations are current.
3. Use the .pot template to create your own plain-text localization file (*.po) and its binary encoding (*.mo), both named with the correct country code (e.g. fr_FR.mo for the french_FRANCE language/geo pair). Poedit is a tool for this translation process; see http://www.poedit.net.

Once you have finalized your translation, create a new issue (on the Issues tab) and attach your .po and .mo files. (NB: .mo files are easily generated & this part of the process should probably change to only request the text .po.)

State the release version or hg revision of Simplish on which you based your localization.

Improving an existing translation

To improve, correct, update, or create a country/region variant of an existing localization, download the nearest-match .po file from the simplish/languages/ directory, if any, and edit as described above, attaching the resulting xy_ZZ.po file to a new Issue to let the project know about it.

Synchronizing a translation with the latest version of Simplish

Translations can be (mostly) mechanically updated with the latest Simplish strings template. To do so, obtain the translation you want to update, along with the simplish.pot file from the tip of the source repository.

1. Open the old .po file in Poedit (eg. fr_FR.po).
2. Select Catalog > Update from POT file ...
3. Select the simplish.pot file in the resulting dialog.
4. Poedit adds new items to translate, and pares those strings no longer in use.
5. Translate any new or significantly modified strings as for a new translation.
6. Attach the resulting .po file to an issue as for a new translation, above.