Making translations

The oriya.po file can then be edited to add the translated Oriya strings. While the editing can be carried out in any editor if one is careful to follow the PO file format, there are several editors that ease the task of editing PO files, among them being po-mode in Emacs, kbabel, gtranslator, poedit, etc. Appdx. B describes features of some of these editors.

The first thing to do is fill in the comments at the beginning and the header entry, parts of which have already been filled in by msginit. The lines in the header entry are pretty much self-explanatory, and details can be found in the gettext::Creating::Header Entry:: info node. After that, the remaining work consists of typing the Oriya text that is to serve as translations for the corresponding English string. For the msgstr line in each of the remaining entries, add the translated Oriya text between the double quotes; the translation corresponding to the English phrase in the msgid string for the entry. For example, for the phrase ``Hello world! \n'' in oriya.po, we could enter ``ନମସ୍କାର \n''. The final oriya.po file might look like:

  # Oriya translations for hello example package.
  # Copyright (C) 2004 Gora Mohanty
  # This file is distributed under the same license as the hello example package.
  # Gora Mohanty <gora_mohanty@yahoo.co.in>, 2004.
  #
  msgid ""
  msgstr ""
  "Project-Id-Version: oriya\n"
  "Report-Msgid-Bugs-To: \n"
  "POT-Creation-Date: 2004-06-22 02:22+0530\n"
  "PO-Revision-Date: 2004-06-22 10:54+0530\n"
  "Last-Translator: Gora Mohanty <gora_mohanty@yahoo.co.in>\n"
  "Language-Team: Oriya\n"
  "MIME-Version: 1.0\n"
  "Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8\n"
  "Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit\n"
  "X-Generator: KBabel 1.3\n"

  #: hello.c:10
  msgid "Hello, world!\n"
  msgstr "ନମସ୍କାର\n"

For editing PO files, I have found the kbabel editor suits me the best. The only problem is that while Oriya text can be entered directly into kbabel using the xkb Oriya keyboard layouts [1] and the entries are saved properly, the text is not displayed correctly in the kbabel window if it includes conjuncts. Emacs po-mode is a little restrictive, but strictly enforces conformance with the PO file format. The main problem with it is that it does not seem currently possible to edit Oriya text in Emacs. yudit is the best at editing Oriya text, but does not ensure that the PO file format is followed. You can play around a bit with these editors to find one that suits your personal preferences. One possibility might be to first edit the header entry with kbabel or Emacs po-mode, and then use yudit to enter the Oriya text on the msgstr lines.