Localization Issues
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Localization Issues

There are a few things that are not directly related to translation but are usually done by the translation team coordinators. The most important one is taking care of basic "localization" issues, if the new language at the same time represents a new country. In this case, it is appreciated if you can provide KDE with information about the currency used in that country, formats of date, time, numbers, and addresses, the flag and a few other settings. This info is stored in the "l10n" directories of the kdebase package and is used all over KDE but especially in the desktop section of the Control Center.

Note

Again: This stuff is country related, not language related. So if your language is not the "official" language of your country you probably do not have to worry about this.

Tip

Even if your language is not an official language of a country, it might be related to one country, or perhaps to a few of them. It would be nice if you could check existing country entries for these countries and eventually add missing entries. This is especially important if the official language of a country is a wide-spread language like French or British English, where the corresponding translator teams have no idea of the habits of the country. Of course, if a country shares a few languages, it would be preferable that the different translator teams agree on the entry for that country.

Note

Unfortunately, if in a country, different users use different settings depending of the language, this cannot be correctly reflected in KDE. This is especially important for countries like Switzerland or Belgium, where you cannot express "P.O. Box" in the correct translated spelling for each language region. If really needed, KDE can be hacked, but then the setting for the country becomes language dependant, which is still not completely correct. (E.g. a letter to a P.O. box to Geneva, in the French-speaking part of Switzerland, should always have "Case Postale", while to Zurich in the German-speaking part of Switzerland, it should be "Postfach".)

The directories in kdebase/l10n are for countries, not for languages, so the codes have a different meaning (even if for example the French language and the country France share a same code: fr). The codes for countries are specified in ISO 3166 (see Wikipedia's article about ISO 3166's two letter code.).

In order to localize KDE to the needs of your country, you have to do the following:

For more info see the README in the kdebase l10n directory. The man in charge for "l10n" (i.e. localization) in KDE is Hans Petter Bieker.

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