Launchpad Help > Translations > Import policy

Overview

When you start using Launchpad to translate a project, you need to import the project's translation templates. Optionally, you may also want to import any existing translations.

Launchpad supports GNU Gettext's .pot templates and .po translation files.

To make translating in Launchpad run smoothly for everyone, we have a few rules that you must follow to ensure a successful import of your templates and translations. Some of these rules are social and cover things such as whether you have permission from the project to start a translation effort in Launchpad. The rest of the rules are technical.

Social rules

When you request a new translation template import into Launchpad, you should make sure of the following:

• The project is published using an open source licence, or the project has a valid commercial subscription.

• The project leaders are happy to publish translations made in Launchpad for their project using the BSD licence.
• The project is not part of an organisation -- such as GNU or Debian -- that already uses another method of translation.
• You represent the upstream project or you otherwise have permission from the project to start a translation effort on Launchpad.

• If you're creating a new project in Launchpad, it must be generic and not specific to translations or a particular language: i.e. myproject not myproject-translations.

Technical rules

Whenever you upload a template for the first time, we check it manually. After that, it should get through our automated approval process without problems. Whether by hand or using software, we'll check each template uploaded using the following rules:

• The template must be in GNU Gettext format and its file name end in .pot (see our guidelines below for directory structure)

• msgid strings must be in English, not any other language or symbolic identifiers.

• If there are multiple template files, each should be in a separate directory. If you're uploading through the web interface, you can upload multiple template files as a tarball. Launchpad can see the directory structure inside the tarball. If you upload just a single file, all the browser gives us is its name and its contents.

If you are uploading translation files, you should follow these rules:

• The file must be in GNU Gettext .po format.

• Translation files should be in the same directory as the template to which they relate.

• The translation files should be named for the appropriate language code: e.g. pt_BR.po Portugese as spoken in Brazil or fr.po for French as spoken in France. Launchpad only accepts languages that have an ISO 639 code.

  • There are two exceptions to this rule: English as spoken in the UK must be named en_GB.po and Chinese. Chinese exists in Launchpad only as three variants: Simplified Chinese (zh_CN), Traditional Chinese (zh_TW) and Hong Kong Chinese (zh_HK).

Other useful guidelines

You can learn more about working with translations and templates in .po and .pot format by reading the GNU Gettext documentation.

You should also be aware of the following:

• Launchpad doesn't support translation to language variants (e.g. Serbian written in Latin, sr@Latn).

• When naming translation files, you should leave out the country code if it is the primary or original country where that language is spoken. For example: pt for Portuguese, not pt_PT.

Sample directory layout

We recommend the standard GNU Gettext directory and file layout:

  template1/template1.pot
  template1/es.po
  template1/de.po
  ...
  template2/template2.pot
  template2/es.po
  template2/de.po

Working with upstream projects

Thousands of people use Launchpad to translate software into their own language. Once you open a project for translation in Launchpad, it's likely that you'll get contributions from members of the Launchpad translations community.

We want everyone's work in Launchpad Translations to have a chance of making it into software that people use. That's why we insist that anyone opening a project in Launchpad for translation must either represent the upstream project or otherwise have permission from the project. We'd hate to see people make translations only for them not to stand a chance of being used in the project.

If you want to open a project for translation in Launchpad, but you're not already involved in that project, you should get in touch with the project.

Template for contacting upstream projects

If you want to suggest to a project that they use Launchpad to translate their software, you might find this email template useful.

Dear project maintainer,

I am interested in translating your application X into the language L, and have noticed you don't have an established translation framework.

I've been translating other programs using Launchpad Translations, a web-based translation service provided by Canonical (the primary sponsor of Ubuntu). Launchpad makes it easy for people to suggest translations and already has a community of thousands of translators.

With Launchpad, all you'd need to do is publish a "translation template" -- in the form of a GNU Gettext .pot file -- via a web form when it best suits you (for example, when your next version is feature complete).  Once published in Launchpad Translations, it would be made available to the community of translators who would be then able to translate it.  When you're ready to release your next version, you would request an 'export' of all the available translations, which you would get in a tar.gz archive.

Launchpad Translations is under continuous development, and features are being added and improved every month.  It is and will always be free of charge for free software projects.  For me, it would make translating your application very easy.

You can learn more about Launchpad Translations at <https://launchpad.net/+tour/translation>.

Thank you,