Translation to Latin

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dave9000
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Translation to Latin

Post by dave9000 »

Hallo,
I would like to translate to ancient latin.
This is something that I want to do for personal fun - I know it would take a long time indeed.
I already started to translate some templates on launchpad.net, even if there is not team yet.
I have a number of questions.

1. Is it even possible to have Linux Mint in latin at all?
Ubuntu explicitly states that only spoken languages will be considered - what about Linux Mint?

2. Is "la_IT.UTF-8" a correct/acceptable locale?
Latin is not an official language in Italy.

3. How can I test a partial translation?
The translation as a whole will not be complete for a long time, but I would like to test the translated templates immediately.
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Pjotr
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Re: Translation to Latin

Post by Pjotr »

dave9000 wrote: Sat Mar 27, 2021 5:33 am Latin is not an official language in Italy.
It is the official spoken language in Vatican City, which is a state....

Cool idea, by the way!

Edit: classical Latin was ditched in Vatican City in 2014, it seems:
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-pope ... O220141006

O tempora, o mores.... :shock:

Nevertheless, I'm confident that the Mint devs will welcome your sympathetic effort.
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lsemmens
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Re: Translation to Latin

Post by lsemmens »

I'd just find my local Priest. :mrgreen:
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dave9000
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Re: Translation to Latin

Post by dave9000 »

Well, in the meantime I settled for LANG=la and LANGUAGE=la:en.
Something is working this way because, some months ago, I manage to compile some .po into .mo and put them in /usr/share/locale/la/LC_MESSAGES.
Problem is: I can't remember how I did it :)
I suppose using poedit but: is there a command line utility to automate the process?
Also the file names doesn't match exactly, e.g. blueberry-la.po in the traslation folder becomes blueberry.mo in LC_MESSAGES.
I guess there's some utility to call to update the system ...
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Pjotr
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Re: Translation to Latin

Post by Pjotr »

dave9000 wrote: Tue Mar 30, 2021 4:05 am Well, in the meantime I settled for LANG=la and LANGUAGE=la:en.
Something is working this way because, some months ago, I manage to compile some .po into .mo and put them in /usr/share/locale/la/LC_MESSAGES.
Problem is: I can't remember how I did it :)
I suppose using poedit but: is there a command line utility to automate the process?
Also the file names doesn't match exactly, e.g. blueberry-la.po in the traslation folder becomes blueberry.mo in LC_MESSAGES.
I guess there's some utility to call to update the system ...
You can use Poedit to transform human-readable .po files into machine-readable .mo files. Simply by clicking the "Save" button in its toolbar: it'll create the .mo file automatically. You can then pump the .mo file into your system. I do that regularly, in order to "live test" new Dutch translations that I've created.

Note that the filenames need to lose their "la" part in your system: the "la" flag should be provided by the subfolder name alone. So that's just how it works. There's logic in it: the blueberry application only needs to look for a file called blueberry.mo in the folder where you tell it to look for it, by selecting the language for your system (in this case the subfolder la).

Also note that although /usr/share/locale is the default folder, certain translations need to land in this folder:
/usr/share/locale-langpack

You might find this tutorial useful that I've written about translating for open source projects:
https://easylinuxtipsproject.blogspot.c ... ating.html
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Re: Translation to Latin

Post by dave9000 »

Thanks,
I was not aware of the second folder - I wrote a small script to automate the task (see below).
I also started building a shared word list, for reference and consistency (https://la.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vicipaedi ... mputatrale).
Who knows? in a couple decades I may manage to get the job done :)

Code: Select all

#!/usr/bin/python3

import os

ID = 'la'
for dp, dn, fn in os.walk('/home/dave/translations'):
        for f in fn:
            if f.endswith(f"-{ID}.po"):
                po = os.path.join(dp, f)
                mo = os.path.join(f"/usr/share/locale/{ID}/LC_MESSAGES/{f[:-6]}.mo")
                mo2 = os.path.join(f"/usr/share/locale-langpack/{ID}/LC_MESSAGES/{f[:-6]}.mo")
                os.system(f"pocompile {po} {mo}")
                os.system(f"pocompile {po} {mo2}")
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Re: Translation to Latin

Post by Pjotr »

Perhaps also helpful: the MATE desktop project already has a translation section for Latin (la) on Transifex, the leading translation platform for many open source projects:
https://www.transifex.com/mate/MATE/

You might also create such a Latin section for Xfce on Transifex, because Xfce also does its translations there:
https://www.transifex.com/xfce/public/

Xfce is an attractive work field for an entirely new language, because there's not as much to do as for bigger projects like MATE and Cinnamon. Transifex is a great and free tool for this.
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dave9000
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Re: Translation to Latin

Post by dave9000 »

Still on this thread, because I have another question about the .mo files.

25% of cinnamon-la.po is translated, so latin words are popping out here and there - and that's good.
BUT some of this translations are wrong!
For example, "Users and groups" becomes "Homines annuntiaturi et circli" - which is questionable/wrong and, more important, it is NOT what I put into the .po/.mo files.
To debug the issue I went back to the US locale, removed everything from the two LA locale folders, and then back to the LA locale:
now 99% of the GUI is in english, but the "annunciaturi" horror is stil there!

There are other strange issues too. For example, trying open a file with xed pops up a "Scripta Edere" caption that isn't in any .po file.
What's going on here?
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Re: Translation to Latin

Post by GELvdH »

This is a Latin spellchecker for OpenOffice, it is not up to date but it may be a start.
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Re: Translation to Latin

Post by GELvdH »

https://extensions.openoffice.org/en/pr ... ctionaries
This is a Latin spellchecker for OpenOffice, iy is not up to date but it may server your purpose.
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