US from UK Translation File

[Dane]

Just modified (4/15/20) this post as I recently found the en and en_GB language files.

I would like to volunteer to assist in making a translation file for en, which I imagine is only a minor tweak to the en_GB language file that appears to currently be an exact copy of the en file.

Upon changing what I believe will just be a few words of issue, we should have a very clean U.S.-friendly version. 

Hope this suggestion doesn't sound like a pile of bollocks. 

[Dane]

Any feedback on this?

Thanks

[Timo]

You're the first one to mention this, so it's never really thought about. The interface is mostly written in en_GB. The languages you can choose from in the preferences dialog are en and en_GB, but this is wrong. There is no en translation, it's just the default. When selecting en, no translation is applied, so it's basically already en_GB. If you can still follow...

There's 2 options at the moment I think:
  1. Change the strings to en_US by default. Keeping an en_GB translation file.
  2. Keep the current en_GB as default, remove the en_GB translation file (it shouldn't be doing anything anyway) and add a en_US translation file.

Can we perhaps create a list of strings in the application that are different between en_GB and en_US? I know "Colour" is the obvious one, but are there more?

[Dane]

My suggestion would be to go with option number two. Mostly because everybody speaking and writing in English is already using the GB file it might as well be default. Then let the oddball guys like myself, change to a US version if they want something else. I’m not sure what the other changes might be but I know normally there are several.  But nothing even remotely as complicated as a complete different language.

[Timo]

I just created an en_US translation file (and changed Colour/Color and Colours/Colors already to test). It should show up fairly soon on https://translations.launchpad.net/pigeonplanner

You can either make changes there through the webinterface, but it requires an account and isn't that user friendly if you just want to go through some strings. I recommend an application like Poedit instead: https://poedit.net/

I'll attach the file to this post if you prefer Poedit.

[Dane]

Thanks.  I’m not familiar with those tool so will have to get up to speed on them.

So you made the change for color and color already?

So one I change my language file I can see the change?

Thx

[Timo]

If you open that file in Poedit, you'll see two columns. On the left all original translatable strings, and the translation on the right. If you scroll a bit through it you'll see that I indeed already made the colour/color change. There's a search function as well. To translate a string, select it and type the translation at the bottom. That's mostly it.

It's a bit more involved to use the translation. Take a look at the languages folder in the Pigeon Planner directory for examples. Follow these steps:
 1. In Poedit, click File=>Compile to MO...
 2. Rename the file to pigeonplanner.mo
 3. Create the folder structure <Pigeon Planner dir>/languages/en_US/LC_MESSAGES/  (again, look at the other languages as example)
 4. Place pigeonplanner.mo in the folder.

Next time you restart Pigeon Planner it'll pick up this new folder and either use it as default if it matches the system's language, or you can choose it from the list in the preferences dialog.