Translation projects

Translation organization

Weblate organizes translatable content into tree like structure. The toplevel object is Project configuration, which should hold all translations which belong together (for example translation of an application in several versions and/or documentation). On the next level, there is Component configuration, which is actually the component to translate. Here you define the VCS repository to use and mask of files to translate. Below Component configuration there are individual translations, which are handled automatically by Weblate as the translation files (matching mask defined in Component configuration) appear in VCS repository.

Примечание

You can share cloned VCS repositories using Weblate internal URLs. Using shared repositories feature is highly recommended when you have many components that use the same VCS. It will improve performance and use less disk space.

Administration

Administration of Weblate is done through standard Django admin interface, which is available under /admin/ URL. Once logged in as user with proper privileges, you can access it using the wrench icon in top navigation:

../_images/admin-wrench.png

Here you can manage objects stored in the database, such as users, translations and other settings:

../_images/admin.png

In the Reports section you can check the status of your site, tweak it for Production setup or manage SSH keys to access Accessing repositories.

With all sections below you can manage database objects. The most interesting one is probably Weblate translations, where you can manage translatable projects, see Project configuration and Component configuration.

Another section, Weblate languages holds language definitions, see Language definitions for more details.

Adding new components

All translation components need to be available as VCS repositories and are organized as project/component structure.

Weblate supports wide range of translation formats (both bilingual and monolingua) supported by translate toolkit, see Supported formats for more information.

Adding project

First you have to add project, which will serve as container for all components. Usually you create one project for one piece of software or book (see Project configuration for information on individual parameters):

../_images/add-project.png

См.также

Project configuration

Bilingual components

Once you have added a project, you can add translation components to it (see Component configuration for information on individual parameters):

../_images/add-component.png

Monolingual components

For easier translating of monolingual formats, you should provide a template file, which contains mapping of message IDs to source language (usually English) (see Component configuration for information on individual parameters):

../_images/add-component-mono.png

Project configuration

To add a new component to translate, you need to create a translation project first. The project is a sort of shelf, in which real translations are folded. All components in the same project share suggestions and the dictionary; also the translations are automatically propagated through all components in a single project (unless disabled in component configuration).

The project has only a few attributes giving translators information about the project:

Project website
URL where translators can find more information about the project.
Mailing list
Mailing list where translators can discuss or comment on translations.
Translation instructions
URL where you have more detailed instructions for translators.
Set Translation-Team header
Whether Weblate should manage Translation-Team header (this is GNU Gettext only feature right now).
Access control
Configure per project access control, see Per project access control for more details.
Enable reviews
Enable review workflow, see Dedicated reviewers.
Enable hooks
Whether unauthenticated Notification hooks will be enabled for this repository.
Source language
Language used for source strings in all components. Change this if you are translating from something else than English.

Примечание

Most of the fields can be edited by project owners or managers in the Weblate interface.

Adjusting interaction

There are also additional features which you can control, like automatic pushing of changes (see also Pushing changes) or maintaining of Translation-Team header.

Component configuration

Component is real component for translating. You enter VCS repository location and file mask for which files to translate and Weblate automatically fetches from the VCS and finds all matching translatable files.

You can find some examples of typical configurations in the Supported formats.

Примечание

It is recommended to have translation components of reasonable size - split the translation by anything what makes sense in your case (individual applications or addons, book chapters or websites).

Weblate easily handles translations with 10000 of units, but it is harder to split work and coordinate among translators with such a large translation. Also when one translator is working on a component, this translation is locked for others, see Translation locking.

Should the language definition for translation be missing, an empty definition is created and named as «cs_CZ (generated)». You should adjust the definition and report this back to Weblate authors so that the missing language can be included in next release.

The component contains all important parameters for working with VCS and getting translations out of it:

Version control system
VCS to use, see Version control integration for details.
Source code repository

VCS repository used to pull changes, see Accessing repositories for more details.

This can be either a real VCS URL or weblate://project/component indicating that the repository should be shared with another component. See Weblate internal URLs for more details.

Repository push URL
Repository URL used for pushing, this is completely optional and push support will be disabled when this is empty. See Accessing repositories for more details on how to specify repository URL.
Repository browser

URL of repository browser to display source files (location where messages are used). When empty no such links will be generated.

You can use following format strings:

  • %(branchs)s - current branch
  • %(line)s - line in file
  • %(file)s - filename
  • %(../file)s - filename in parent directory
  • %(../../file)s - filename in grandparent directory

For example on GitHub, you would use something like https://github.com/WeblateOrg/hello/blob/%(branch)s/%(file)s#L%(line)s.

Exported repository URL
URL where changes made by Weblate are exported. This is important when Continuous translation is not used or when there is need to manually merge changes. You can use Git exporter to automate this for Git repositories.
Repository branch
Which branch to checkout from the VCS and where to look for translations.
File mask

Mask of files to translate including path. It should include one * replacing language code (see Language definitions for information how this is processed). In case your repository contains more than one translation files (eg. more Gettext domains), you need to create separate component for each.

For example po/*.po or locale/*/LC_MESSAGES/django.po.

In case your filename contains special chars such as [, ], these need to be escaped as [[] or []].

Monolingual base language file
Base file containing strings definition for Monolingual components.
Edit base file
Whether to allow editing of base file for Monolingual components.
Base file for new translations
Base file used to generate new translations, eg. .pot file with Gettext.
File format
Translation file format, see also Supported formats.
Source string bug report address
Email address used for reporting upstream bugs. This address will also receive notification about any source string comments made in Weblate.
Locked
You can lock the translation to prevent updates by users.
Allow translation propagation

You can disable propagation of translations to this component from other components within same project. This really depends on what you are translating, sometimes it’s desirable to have same string used.

It’s usually a good idea to disable this for monolingual translations unless you are using the same IDs across the whole project.

Save translation history
Whether to store a history of translation changes in database.
Enable suggestions
Whether translation suggestions are accepted for this component.
Suggestion voting
Enable voting for suggestions, see Suggestion voting.
Autoaccept suggestions
Automatically accept voted suggestions, see Suggestion voting.
Quality checks flags
Additional flags to pass to quality checks, see Customizing checks.
Translation license
License of this translation.
License URL
URL where users can find full text of a license.
New language
How to handle requests for creating new languages. Please note that the availability of choices depends on the file format, see Supported formats.
Merge style
You can configure how the updates from the upstream repository are handled. This might not be supported for some VCS. See Merge or rebase for more details.
Commit message
Message used when committing translation, see Template markup.
Committer name
Name of the committer used on Weblate commits, the author will be always the real translator. On some VCS this might be not supported. Default value can be changed by DEFAULT_COMMITER_NAME.
Committer email
Email of committer used on Weblate commits, the author will be always the real translator. On some VCS this might be not supported. Default value can be changed by DEFAULT_COMMITER_EMAIL.
Push on commit
Whether any committed changes should be automatically pushed to upstream repository.
Age of changes to commit
Configures how old changes (in hours) will be committed by commit_pending management command (usually executed by cron). Default value can be changed by COMMIT_PENDING_HOURS.
Language filter
Regular expression which is used to filter translation when scanning for file mask. This can be used to limit list of languages managed by Weblate (eg. ^(cs|de|es)$ will include only those there languages. Please note that you need to list language codes as they appear in the filename.

Примечание

Most of the fields can be edited by project owners or managers in the Weblate interface.

Template markup

Weblate uses simple markup language on several places where text rendering is needed. It is based on The Django template language so it can be quite powerful.

Currently it is used in:

There are following variables available in the templates:

{{ language_code }}
Language code
{{ language_name }}
Language name
{{ component_name }}
Component name
{{ component_slug }}
Component slug
{{ project_name }}
Project name
{{ project_slug }}
Project slug
{{ url }}
Translation URL
{{ stats }}
Translation stats, this has futher attributes, see below for examples.
{{ stats.all }}
Total strings count
{{ stats.fuzzy }}
Count of strings needing review
{{ stats.fuzzy_percent }}
Percent of strings needing review
{{ stats.translated }}
Translated strings count
{{ stats.translated_percent }}
Translated strings percent
{{ stats.allchecks }}
Number of strings with failing check
{{ stats.allchecks_percent }}
Percent of strings with failing check
{{ author }}
Author of current commit, available only in the commit scope.

You can combine them with filters:

{{ component|title }}

You can use conditions:

{% if stats.translated_percent > 80 %}Well translated!{% endif %}

…and other Django template features.

Importing speed

Fetching VCS repository and importing translations to Weblate can be a lengthy process depending on size of your translations. Here are some tips to improve this situation:

Clone Git repository in advance

You can put in place a Git repository which will be used by Weblate. The repositories are stored in vcs directory in path defined by DATA_DIR in settings.py in <project>/<component> directories.

This can be especially useful if you already have local clone of this repository and you can use --reference option while cloning:

git clone \
    --reference /path/to/checkout \
    https://github.com/WeblateOrg/weblate.git \
    weblate/repos/project/component

Optimize configuration

The default configuration is useful for testing and debugging Weblate, while for production setup, you should do some adjustments. Many of them have quite a big impact on performance. Please check Production setup for more details, especially:

Disable not needed checks

Some quality checks can be quite expensive and if you don’t need them, they can save you some time during import. See CHECK_LIST for more information how to configure this.

Automatic creation of components

In case you have project with dozen of translation files (eg. for different Gettext domains or parts of Android apps), you might want to import them automatically. This can be either achieved from command line using import_project or import_json or by installing Component discovery addon.

For using the addon, you need to first create component for one translation file (choose the one that is least likely to be renamed or removed in future) and install the addon on this component.

For the management commans, you need to create a project which will contain all components and then it’s just a matter of running import_project or import_json.