_{This is a tomboy-ng doc for the Github Wiki. Its generated from a note in the tomboy-ng doc dir, don't edit the wiki directly.}

Tomboy-ng is written in English by someone who speaks no other language than English. Sorry !

But it is built using tools that allow easy translation to many other languages. This page is about using those translations and, further down, how to contribute to the project by making a translation to another language.

There are two independent aspects to a tomboy-ng translation. The first is all the text that appears during the use of the app, menus, labels and prompts. The other aspect is a small set of (tomboy style) help notes, available from the main file menu.

At the time of writing, we have only Spanish (Application Translations and Help Notes), French (Application Translations and part Help Notes) and Dutch (dated Application Translation only) and Ukranian (Application Translations and Help Notes). Please consider making a translation to another language if you can.

Tomboy-ng should detect the local language settings of your computer and, if it can, will replace the English content with something more appropriate. If this does not happen, or you need to override its decision, you can manually tell tomboy-ng to display in one of its supported languages using the two letter language code. For example, to display in Spanish, you would start tomboy-ng with this command :

tomboy-ng --lang=es <enter>

Tomboy-ng comes with a small set of notes on various help topics. Translating these notes is quite separate from the application text so its not selected automatically, you select another language yourself. To do so, go to Settings, Notes and see "Help Notes Language".

You are very welcome to contribute either (or both) an Application Translation or translate the set of Help Notes. Very welcome !

To do either, download the English version from the Git site, for the Application Translation, download the file /po/tomboy-ng.pot and rename it tomboy-ng.XX.po (XX being your language code). Most people tend to use the freely available poedit program to do the Application Translation, it shows you the original English and invites you to put in your translation.

You can either return the edited file via a Git pull request or, perhaps easier, email it to the author.

Tomboy-ng is now reasonably stable and huge changes to translations is not expected. But if you see something that needs attention, download the existing po file in your language, make your updates and send it back.

Similar approaches apply to the help notes, they appear with a .note extension in the /doc/HELP/ directory. Other notes in the /doc directory are not part of the help notes kit and do not need translation.

Post an issue message on the git site or the tomboy mailing list if you need any help.