\title Guide to the Qt Translation Tools\granularity chapter\chapter IntroductionQt provides excellent support for translating applications into locallanguages. This Guide explains how to use Qt's translation tools foreach of the roles involved in translating an application. The Guidebegins with a brief overview of the issues that must be considered,followed by chapters devoted to each role and the supporting toolsprovided.\link Release... Chapter 2: Release Manager \endlink is aimed at theperson with overall responsibility for the release of theapplication. They will typically coordinate the work of the softwareengineers and the translator. The chapter describes the use of twotools. The \l lupdate tool is used to synchronize source code andtranslations. The \l lrelease tool is used to create runtimetranslation files for use by the released application.\link Translators Chapter 3: Translators \endlink is for translators.It describes the use of the \e {Qt Linguist} tool. No computerknowledge beyond the ability to start a program and use a text editoror word processor is required.\link Programmers Chapter 4: Programmers \endlink is for Qtprogrammers. It explains how to create Qt applications that are ableto use translated text. It also provides guidance on how to help thetranslator identify the context in which phrases appear. Thischapter's three short tutorials cover everything the programmer needsto do.\section1 Overview of the Translation ProcessMost of the text that must be translated in an application programconsists of either single words or short phrases. These typicallyappear as window titles, menu items, pop-up help text (balloon help),and labels to buttons, check boxes and radio buttons.The phrases are entered into the source code by the programmer intheir native language using a simple but special syntax to identifythat the phrases require translation. The Qt tools provide contextinformation for each of the phrases to help the translator, and theprogrammer is able to add additional context information to phraseswhen necessary. The release manager generates a set of translationfiles that are produced from the source files and passes these to thetranslator. The translator opens the translation files using \e {QtLinguist}, enters their translations and saves the results back intothe translation files, which they pass back to the release manager.The release manager then generates fast compact versions of thesetranslation files ready for use by the application. The tools aredesigned to be used in repeated cycles as applications change andevolve, preserving existing translations and making it easy toidentify which new translations are required. \e {Qt Linguist} alsoprovides a phrase book facility to help ensure consistenttranslations across multiple applications and projects.Translators and programmers must address a number of issues becauseof the subtleties and complexities of human language:\list\i A single phrase may need to be translated into several differentforms depending on context, e.g. \e open in English might become \e\OEFFNEN, "open file", or \e aufbauen, "open internet connection", inGerman.\i Keyboard accelerators may need to be changed but withoutintroducing conflicts, e.g. "\&Quit" in English becomes "Avslutt" inNorwegian which doesn't contain a "Q". We cannot use a letter that isalready in use -- unless we change several accelerators.\i Phrases that contain variables, for example, "The 25 files selected willtake 63 seconds to process", where the two numbers are insertedprogrammatically at runtime may need to be reworded because in adifferent language the word order and therefore the placement of thevariables may have to change.\endlistThe Qt translation tools provide clear and simple solutions to theseissues.\RULEPlease send comments and suggestions regarding this tutorial to the\link mailto:doc@trolltech.com?subject=Translation_Tutorial Qt docteam \endlink. Bugs in the tools should be sent to \linkmailto:qt-bugs@trolltech.com?subject=Translation_Tutorialqt-bugs\endlink.\input linguist-manager.leaf\input linguist-translator.leaf\input linguist-programmer.leaf