Translating the User Guide

To translate the NVDA User Guide and the associated keyboard commands quick reference file to your language, you need userGuide.t2t file from our SVN server. By default, you will receive an empty user guide file with the title information for both user guide and keyboard reference filled in.

For best results, it is recommended to use Notepad++ or similar editors (not Notepad) for formatting reasons, as user guide file requires following the correct formatting structure as discussed below.

Submitting changes and receiving updates

It is encouraged to save your changes periodically to ensure no accidental loss of your user guide translation. Once you save the user guide file, commit to our SVN server for processing the t2t to HTML. After a few minutes, perform SVN update, and depending on extent of your changes, you will see one of the following:

• If you modified the User Guide only, a file named userGuide.html will be generated.
• If you translated keyboard commands table in addition to the user guide text, an additional file named keyCommands.html will be generated.
• If a section of the user guide has been translated, two files related to user guide differences and status will be updated.

When updates to the user guide is needed, an email or Twitter will be sent to you. The updates and changes between revisions can be found at the following location:

yourLangCode/ug-diffs/revNo

Structure and the text format of the User Guide

General overview

Just like changes.t2t file, userGuide.t2t file uses special symbols to denote headings and lists. However, vertical bars (|) are used when working with tables, as tables are used in keyboard reference file.

Keyboard commands and tables

Throughout the user guide file, you will see vertical bars |) surrounding the text found in the keyboard commands file. In addition, you'll see keyboard commands inclusion tag (%kc) to denote that the information between start and end tags will also be found in keyboard commands file. A typical format is listed below:

• %kc:beginInclude: This denotes start of keyboard commands tables.
• A table of keyboard commands (see below for an example).
• %kc:endInclude: End of keyboard reference section.

For example, the keyboard reference section for some general NVDA commands is written as follows:

%kc:beginInclude

Name	key	description

| NvDA Menu | NVDA+N | Opens NVDA Menu. |

| Quit NVDA | NVDA+Q | Quits NVDA! |

| Current time | NVDA+F12 | Pressing once reports current time. Pressing twice reports current date. |

%kc:endInclude

As noted above, a table row consists of vertical bars on left and right edge positions and a vertical bar separating columns.

Few translation tips for user guide

• For cleaner results, start with a blank user guide that contains just section names. Then fill in the section names and rest of the user guide in your language.
• For consistency, have the English User Guide handy for reference and to learn crucial concepts for translating some texts.
• After translating the user guide, the end result could be different from nvda.po (NvDA interface) file. For this reason, it is strongly recommended to check the user guide and NvDA interface message file regularly to make sure the texts are synchronized.
• Don't translate Words in brackets '[ and ]' as they are converted into links.
• Some words will be replaced after conversion to HTML. For example, NVDA-version will be replaced with the version number of NVDA.
• Save the user guide file as an UTF8 file. Be sure to check the resulting HTML file for format problems.