# Re: Bitcoin client and website translation

Post by: satoshi on February 17, 2010, 07:19:43 PM

I updated the SVN with changes to support translation.  Translatable strings are all enclosed in _(""), and we're using UTF-8 on all platforms.

When the program runs, it looks in the directory of the EXE for the file: locale\<langcode>\LC_MESSAGES\bitcoin.mo

<langcode\> is the two letter code of the language your OS is set to, like "de" or "nl".

On Linux, it also looks for:<br>
/usr/share/locale/<langcode\>/LC_MESSAGES/bitcoin.mo<br>
/usr/local/share/locale/<langcode\>/LC_MESSAGES/bitcoin.mo<br>
(are there other standard places it should look on linux?)

Here's a quick walkthrough using poedit to make a .po and .mo file:

\- Download the bitcoin sourcecode from SVN<br>
\- In the trunk directory, mkdir locale\\<lang\>\\LC_MESSAGES<br>
\- In poedit, File->New catalog->Paths tab<br>
\- Click the "New item" dotted rectangle button<br>
\- Put "../../.." and MAKE SURE TO PRESS ENTER to add the path<br>
\- Click OK<br>
\- Save the file as "bitcoin.po" in the LC_MESSAGES directory you made<br>
\- It should then scan the sourcecode and find about 170 strings<br>
\- If it didn't find anything, check Catalog->Settings->Path tab, make sure the "../../.." was added

When you're done translating, commit both bitcoin.po (the editable catalog file) and bitcoin.mo (compiled data used by the program).

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Source file: bitcoin-forum-satoshi-nakamoto.tgz

External link: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=47.msg389#msg389