Portable Object files

PO files are plain text files that contain your translation. You can safely edit them by hand.

po minimalistic example (en_US/LC_MESSAGES/mydomain.po):

msgid ""
msgstr ""
"Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8\n"
"Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit\n"

msgid "Simple test"
msgstr "A small sentence in english"

Once edited, each PO file must be indexed using:

msgfmt mydomain.po -o mydomain.mo

This command won't work if you don't have gettext tools installed on your system.

This will produce a MO file (machine object) indexing your translation for quick access.

Then you have to translate this file in other languages.

po minimalistic example (fr_FR/LC_MESSAGES/mydomain.po):

msgid ""
msgstr ""
"Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8\n"
"Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit\n"

msgid "Simple test"
msgstr "Une petite phrase en français"

The translation file must also be indexed:

msgfmt mydomain.po -o mydomain.mo