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1 Introduction to Wyslij-po

It is a common practice for a program to be documented and to produce its diagnostics in English. However, the waste majority of us would prefer their computer to speak our native language instead. This goal is already achieved for many free software programs, and is going to be achieved for still more of them using the methods called internationalization and localization. These terms are often written abbreviated as i18n and l10n, correspondingly. In short, i18n consists in modifying a program in such a way that, while still producing its output in English, it would allow this output to be translated to any given language on the fly. Similarly, l10n consists in supplying an already internationalized program enough information for it to be able to translate its output to a particular language. Both terms are discussed in further detail in I18n in GNU gettext manual.

While internationalization is usually taken care of by programmers, localization is the responsibility of translators. Usually this process consists of creating a special file, called PO file, which is basically a table of all the messages the program ever issues, which, for each such message, lists its translation to a given language (see PO Files in GNU gettext manual).

When translator finishes writing a PO file, he submits it via electronic mail to the free Translation Project (http://translationproject.org), or TP for short, which acts as a repository for the existing translations. It is from the Translation Project that maintainers download PO files for inclusion into their projects, when preparing them for the release.

There are several ways to submit a translation. First, it can, of course, be submitted manually. Secondly, you can use the M (po-send-mail) command in GNU Emacs po-mode (see PO Files in GNU gettext manual). Finally, you can use some specialized program to do that.

If you choose the last possibility, wyslij-po is for you. It is a specialized program which verifies PO files and submits them to the TP.

The program name1 means ‘send-po’ in Polish and is pronounced roughly like ‘vishleey-po’.

The program is built using GNU Mailutils — a powerful collection of libraries and utilities for handling electronic mail.


Footnotes

(1)

It should more properly have been written ‘wyślij-po’.


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