Translating aMule

aMule is translated by volunteers on Weblate, a web-based translation tool. All you need is a Weblate account and a web browser — no programming knowledge and no git. This page explains how translating on Weblate works, why a translation you saved may not appear in aMule yet, and how to reach the developers.

Four parts of the project can be translated, each a group of components in Weblate: the application interface (Application, which also covers the Windows installer), the man pages (Application Man Pages), the amuleapi Web UI (Application WebUI), and this website (the Website: … components).

Prefer git?

Translations can also be submitted as a pull request, without Weblate. See the Translations guide for the file formats and the manual workflow.

How a Translation Reaches aMule

Every translation is reviewed before it is used. Saving a string in Weblate is only the first step:

1. You translate a string and save it. It is stored as Waiting for review.
2. A reviewer approves it. Each language can have its own reviewers — fluent speakers who check the translations of other contributors. The maintainers can approve translations too.
3. The maintainers export it. Approved translations are sent from Weblate to the repository on GitHub as a pull request, which the maintainers merge.
4. It ships with the next aMule release (application, man pages and Web UI) or the next website update.

Only approved translations leave Weblate. A translation that is still waiting for review stays inside Weblate: it is visible there, but aMule does not use it.

Translation States

Weblate shows a state for every translated string. Only one of them reaches aMule:

State	Meaning	Used by aMule
Not translated	There is no translation yet.	No — the English text is shown
Needs editing / Needs rewriting	A translation exists but must be checked, usually because the English source changed.	No — the English text is shown
Waiting for review	Translated and saved, not yet checked by a reviewer.	Not yet
Approved	Checked by a reviewer. Only reviewers can change it.	Yes

Suggestions are not a state: they are proposals attached to a string, and they leave its state unchanged (see Save or Suggest).

Save or Suggest

The Weblate editor offers two ways to submit your text: Save (Save and continue / Save and stay) and Suggest. Prefer Save, and use Suggest when saving is not possible.

• Save stores your text as the translation of the string. It enters the review queue and, once approved, is used by aMule.
• Suggest only attaches a proposal to the string. It does not replace the current translation and does not enter the review queue: somebody has to accept it first.

Every translation is reviewed anyway, so saving is safe — there is no need to be cautious and suggest instead. Suggest is for strings that are already Approved: only reviewers can change those, so a reviewer for the language will accept your suggestion if it is better.

If you find good suggestions left by other people on a string that is not yet approved, accept them so they enter the review queue too.

Why Is My Translation Not in aMule?

The most common reasons, in order:

• It is waiting for review. No reviewer has approved it yet. Some languages have no reviewer at all — if yours is one of them, consider becoming a reviewer.
• It is a suggestion, not a translation. See Save or Suggest.
• It was approved recently. Approved translations are exported when a maintainer pushes them from Weblate, not instantly.
• The man page is not translated enough. A translated man page is only built when at least 80% of its strings are approved; below that, the English man page is installed.
• No release has shipped since. Application, man-page and Web UI translations reach users with the next aMule release; website translations appear with the next website update.

To see what is pending for your language, open the language in Weblate and filter the strings waiting for review.

Becoming a Reviewer

Reviewers are what makes translations reach aMule: a language without a reviewer cannot publish anything. If you speak a language fluently and want to take care of it, open an issue with:

• your Weblate username;
• the language (or languages) you want to review.

Having already contributed translations for that language on Weblate helps. The maintainers add you to the Review team for that language; from then on you can approve the translations of other contributors (select Approved as the review state before saving), mark your own as approved, change approved strings, and accept the suggestions other contributors leave on them.

Adding a New Language

Translators cannot create a new language by themselves, because the language must also be registered in the repository first. Pressing Start new translation on Weblate sends a request to the maintainers; you can also open an issue asking for it. Once the language is added, it normally becomes available in every component.

Translation Guidelines

• Application strings: keep placeholders exactly as they are. Format specifiers (%s, %d, %u, …) must appear unchanged and in the same order as in the English text — swapping %s and %d crashes aMule. Escape codes (\n, \t) must be preserved too. Weblate flags mismatches; do not ignore those warnings. The full rules are in the Format Specifiers Reference.
• Application strings: keep the & accelerator before the same letter as in the English text (when your script has no such letter, keep it before a suitable one), and keep leading and trailing spaces.
• Man pages: keep the formatting markers such as B<…> (bold) and I<…> (italic); translate only the text inside them. See po4a Formatting Codes.
• Web UI and website: keep {name} placeholders (e.g. {message}, {n}, {link}) untranslated — they are replaced by values or links when the text is shown. In Web UI plural forms, {n} may be left out when the wording already states the number (e.g. "Un comentario").
• Translate faithfully. Do not add or remove information. If the English text is wrong or unclear, report it instead of working around it.
• Prefer precision over naturalness. aMule users are familiar with technical terminology: keep English terms (e.g. "hash", "peer", "eD2k") when a translated equivalent would be less precise or less common in your language.

Contacting the Developers

For anything related to translations, open an issue on the aMule issue tracker (a GitHub account is required). This is the place to:

• ask to become a reviewer, or report that the translations for your language have been waiting for review for a long time;
• request a new language;
• report a problem in an English source string — a typo, an ambiguous text, or a string that cannot be translated correctly;
• ask for context: where a string appears and what it means.

Start the title with [Translation] and the language, e.g. [Translation] German: request to become a reviewer. When the issue is about a specific string, include its Weblate link — every string has its own URL, shown in the browser address bar while you edit it.