Merging old and new translations

As before, extract the translatable strings from hello.c to a new portable object template file, hello-new.pot, using xgettext,

  xgettext -d hello -s -o hello-new.pot hello.c

Now, we use a new program, msgmerge, to merge the existing .po file with translations into the new template file, viz.,

  msgmerge -s -U oriya.po hello-new.pot

The -s option produces sorted output, and the -U option updates the existing .po file, oriya.po. We could have chosen to instead create a new .po file by using ``-o <filename>'' instead of -U. The updated .po file will still have the old translations embedded in it, and new entries with untranslated msgid lines. For us, the new lines in oriya.po will look like,

  #: hello.c:11
  msgid "How are you?\n"
  msgstr ""

For the new translation, we could use, ``ଆପଣ କିପରି ଅଛନ୍ତି?'' in place of the English phrase ``How are you?'' The updated oriya.po file, including the translation 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 examplepackage.
  # Gora Mohanty <gora_mohanty@yahoo.co.in>, 2004.
  #
  msgid ""
  msgstr ""
  "Project-Id-Version: oriya\n"
  "Report-Msgid-Bugs-To: \n"
  "POT-Creation-Date: 2004-06-23 14:30+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"

  #: hello.c:11
  msgid "How are you?\n"
  msgstr "ଆପଣକିପରି ଅଛନ୍ତି?\n"

Compile oriya.po to a machine object file, and install in the appropriate place as in Sec. 2.4. Thus,

  msgfmt -c -v -o hello.mo oriya.po
  mkdir -p /usr/share/locale/or_IN/LC_MESSAGES
  cp hello.mo /usr/share/locale/or_IN/LC_MESSAGES

You can test the Oriya output as above, after recompiling hello.c and running it in an Oriya locale.