TRANSLATING: HACKING for translators?

In an effort to organise translation contributions, I wrote the following
document, which I propose to commit as TRANSLATING next to HACKING.

bye,

Erik.

                                                              -*- text -*-

If you are contributing code or translations to the Subversion project,
please read this first.

                   ===============================
                   Guide to translating Subversion
                   ===============================

$LastChangedDate$

* Introduction
* Starting a new translation
* Requirements for po files
* Conventions for the empty string msgid section
* Single versus double quotes
* Translation teams


Introduction
============

Subversion uses gettext for its translation. Gettext uses '.po' files
to store translation information; the existing ones are kept in the
subversion/po directory of the repository.
[Note that the last paragraph deliberately does not say GNU gettext.]


Starting a new translation
==========================

Before starting a new translation please contact the subversion
development mailing list to make sure you are not duplicating efforts.

After that, you should perform the following steps:

 Unix

1) check out Subversion (see INSTALL for more information)
2) run ./autogen.sh
3) run ./configure
4) run make locale-gnu-pot
  This step is currently only supported for GNU gettext systems

Steps (2) and (3) generate a Makefile; step (4) generates
subversion/po/subversion.pot


Requirements for po files
=========================

Any po file used with Subversion - whether submitted to the project or
used locally - must satisfy two conditions:

1) po files must be UTF-8 encoded
2) the empty string section (msgid "") must not contain a 'charset='
  string

These requirements stem from the fact that Subversion uses UTF-8
internally, some implementations translate to the active locale and the
fact that bind_textdomain_codeset() is not portable accross
implementations.


Conventions for the empty string msgid section
==============================================

Some gettext implementations use a section with a msgid "" (empty string)
to keep administrative data. One of the strings suggested is the
'Last-Translator:' field. Because the Subversion project has a policy not
to name names in specific files, but give credit in the repository log
messages, you are requested not to use this field.


Single versus double quotes
===========================

The project has standardised the use of quotes. Some translation teams
have done the same. If there is no translation team for your locale or
they did not standardise quoting, please follow the project guidelines per
HACKING. If they did: follow them :-)

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