About Translation:

Translation, also called localization (or l10n for short), is a task that can be
contributed by anyone. No programming skills are required. Any language that is
not English (original messages) can be contributed.
Localization software helps translate the strings that appear inside the applica
tion, including menus, buttons, and dialog boxes. All of the user visible string
s are extracted from the Dream source code and placed into a "source message fil
e" file called dreamtr.ts. The localization software allows you to translate the
strings in this file.
Translation instructions:
Before starting a new translation, ask first on the Sourceforge Dream forum if s
omebody else is doing it for that language. If no, then proceed.
First, you will need to download latest Dream CVS or upcoming version 1.2.
In the following sections, the XX code refers to the code for your language (da=
Danish, de=German, en=English, es=Spanish, fi=Finnish, fr=French, it=Italian, nl
=Dutch, no=Norwegian, ru=Russian, sv=Swedish, ..).
Under Linux/Uni*x:
All the TS files are under common/GUI-QT/languages/dreamtr.XX.ts (in CVS reposit
ory). In linux/ subdir, run "make languages/dreamtr.XX.ts" to either create or u
pdate/merge the TS file. Edit the linux/languages/dreamtr.XX.ts file and to test
it, run "make languages/dreamtr.XX.qm" to create the QM release file. Copy that
QM file as dreamtr.qm and restart Dream program to use it. When your are satisf
ied with the translation, then the TS file has to be copied back into common/GUI
-QT/languages and use "cvs diff -u" or alike for patch submitting.
Under Windows:
To start a new translation, download the latest file of the language drm/common/
GUI-QT/languages/dreamtr.XX.ts. If this is a translation for a new language, dow
nload the file drm/linux/dreamtr.ts instead. Rename it dreamtr.XX.ts when you be
gin translating, where XX is the code explained above.
When you have begun translating the source message file (a TS file), use your tr
anslation program to compile a light-weight binary message file (a QM file) from
the TS file, suitable only for end use. This will produce a file called dreamtr
.XX.qm.
Providing translations (Linux/Windows):
Provide translations for the source texts in the TS file.
The source message file (TS file) is a XML format file. Even though it can be ed
ited by regular text editor, it is recommended to use a specialized tool for eas
e of use and better support of Unicode charset.
There's a nice Qt GUI named 'linguist'[1] to edit translations. Debian users may
simply "apt-get install qt3-linguist". Linguist comes with Qt Phrase Books (QTH
files) with translations from common words of many languages. According to Trol
ltech site[2], it works for Qt2/Windows. I'm curious also if it would handle jap
anese translation or any non-latin based languages. Anyone from the country of t
he rising sun?
KBabel[3], has support for Qt files too.
To create the QM file from the TS file, you can also use Qt-provided 'lrelease'
cmdline tool.
[1] http://www.trolltech.com/company/announce/linguistpre.html
[2] http://doc.trolltech.com/2.3.9/i18n.html
[3] http://i18n.kde.org/tools/kbabel/
Notes:
* Strings like "&File" and "New &Audio Track" are menu items. The letter after t
he & character is used as a keyboard shortcut on Windows and Unix.
* The HTML tags "<b></b>" etc. have to be reproduced at the appropriate places i
n the translation.
* Be careful as some texts may have space constraints in the Graphical User Inte
rface.
* You will find some strings like "%1 of %2 files copied.\nCopying: %3". The % s
igns mark places where additional information will be inserted into the string.
You are allowed to change the order of the % markers in the translation if the p
rogrammer did his/her work right.
User Point of view:
Download the QM file for the language of your choice. You may also re-generate i
t from a TS file.
In the same folder as the Dream executable, rename your dreamtr.XX.qm file to dr
eamtr.qm. Restart the Dream program. If dreamtr.qm exists it is loaded, otherwis
e the internal text (English) is used.
Programmer point of view:
To the programmer's point of view, to get translation working, just replace all
"" literals by tr(""). tr() is based on QString with internal Unicode support. U
nlike GNU gettext, the translating library is already included in Qt. A QTransla
tor is initialized at startup of the program. Then binary translation files (QM
file) have to be distributed along for translation to take place. That's all.

The translated text is "plugged" (at runtime) into the code by the tr() function
(which tr name is short to not clutter the code). If no translation is availabl
e for the argument, the original text is returned, otherwise it is retrieved fro
m a fast access catalog.
Run "make -C linux/ dreamtr.ts" to extract translatable text from the C++ source
code of the Qt application, resulting in a source message file (a TS file).
A Qt tool "lupdate" automatically scans the .cpp/.h/.ui files and extract the st
ring literals within the tr() argument.
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This text was written by Stephane Fillod