Translation projects

Translation organization

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

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

Weblate supports a wide range of translation formats (both bilingual and monolingual ones) supported by Translate Toolkit, see Supported file formats for more info.

Примечание

You can share cloned VCS repositories using Weblate internal URLs. Using this feature is highly recommended when you have many components sharing the same VCS. It improves performance and decreases the required disk space.

Adding translation projects and components

Изменено в версии 3.2: Since the 3.2 release the interface for adding projects and components is included in Weblate, and no longer requires you to use Django admin interface.

Изменено в версии 3.4: As of 3.4, the process of adding components is multi staged, with automated discovery of most parameters.

Based on your permissions, you can create new translation projects and components in Weblate. It is always permitted for superusers, and if your instance uses billing (e.g. like https://hosted.weblate.org/ see Billing), you can also create those based on your plans allowance.

You can view your current billing plan on a separate page:

../_images/user-billing.png

The project creation can be initiated from there, or using the menu in the navigation bar, filling in basic info about the translation project to complete addition of it:

../_images/user-add-project.png

After creating the project, you are taken directly to the project page:

../_images/user-add-project-done.png

Creating a new translation component can be initiated via a single click there. The process of creating a component is multi-staged and automatically detects most translation parameters.

Once you have existing translation components, you can also easily add new ones for additional files or branches using same repository.

First you need to fill in name and repository location:

../_images/user-add-component-init.png

On the next page, you are presented with a list of discovered translatable resources:

../_images/user-add-component-discovery.png

As a last step, you review the translation component info and fill in optional details:

../_images/user-add-component.png

Project configuration

To add a new component for translation, you need to create a translation project first. The project is like a shelf, in which real translations are stacked. All components in the same project share suggestions and their dictionary; the translations are also automatically propagated through all components in a single project (unless turned off in the component configuration).

The project has only a few attributes that informs translators of it:

Project website
URL where translators can find more info about the project.
Mailing list
Mailing list where translators can discuss or comment translations.
Translation instructions
URL to more site with more detailed instructions for translators.
Set Language-Team header
Whether Weblate should manage the Language-Team header (this is a GNU Gettext only feature right now).
Use shared translation memory
Whether to use shared translation memory, see Shared translation memory for more details.
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 are to be used 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 maintainership of the Language-Team header.

Component configuration

A component is a grouping of something for translation. You enter a VCS repository location and file mask for which files you want translated, and Weblate automatically fetches from this VCS, and finds all matching translatable files.

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

Примечание

It is recommended to keep translation components to a reasonable size - split the translation by anything that makes sense in your case (individual apps or addons, book chapters or websites).

Weblate easily handles translations with 10000s of strings, but it is harder to split work and coordinate among translators with such large translation components.

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

The component contains all important parameters for working with the VCS, and for 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 either be 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 is turned off when this is empty. See Accessing repositories for more details on how to specify a repository URL.
Repository browser

URL of repository browser used to display source files (location of used messages). When empty, no such links will be generated. You can use Template markup.

For example on GitHub, use something like https://github.com/WeblateOrg/hello/blob/{{branch}}/{{filename}}#L{{line}}.

Exported repository URL
URL where changes made by Weblate are exported. This is important when Continuous localization is not used, or when there is a 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 info on how this is processed). In case your repository contains more than one translation file (e.g. more Gettext domains), you need to create a component for each of them.

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

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

Monolingual base language file
Base file containing string definitions for Monolingual components.
Edit base file
Whether to allow editing the base file for Monolingual components.
Template for new translations
Base file used to generate new translations, e.g. .pot file with Gettext, see Adding new translations for more info.
File format
Translation file format, see also Supported file 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 turn off 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 make use of a translation more than once.

It’s usually a good idea to turn this off 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 the database.
Enable suggestions
Whether translation suggestions are accepted for this component.
Suggestion voting
Turns on votecasting for suggestions, see Suggestion voting.
Autoaccept suggestions
Automatically accept voted suggestions, see Suggestion voting.
Translation flags
Customization of quality checks and other Weblate behavior, see Customizing behavior.
Translation license
License of the translation, (does not need to be the same as the source code license).
License URL
URL where users can find the actual text of a license in full.
New translation
How to handle requests for creation of new languages. See Adding new translations.
Language code style
Customize language code used to generate the filename for translations created by Weblate, see Adding new translations for more details.
Merge style
You can configure how updates from the upstream repository are handled. This might not be supported for some VCSs. See Merge or rebase for more details.
Commit message
Message used when committing a translation, see Template markup, default can be changed by DEFAULT_COMMIT_MESSAGE.
Committer name
Name of the committer used for Weblate commits, the author will always be the real translator. On some VCSs this might be not supported. Default value can be changed by DEFAULT_COMMITER_NAME.
Committer e-mail
Email of committer used for Weblate commits, the author will always be the real translator. On some VCSs this might be not supported. Default value can be changed by DEFAULT_COMMITER_EMAIL.
Push on commit
Whether committed changes should be automatically pushed to the upstream repository. When enabled, the push is initiated once Weblate commits changes to its internal repository (see Lazy commits). To actually enable pushing Repository push URL has to be configured as well.
Age of changes to commit
Sets how old changes (in hours) are to get before they are committed by background task or commit_pending management command. All changes in a component are committed once there is at least one older than this period. The Default value can be changed by COMMIT_PENDING_HOURS.
Language filter
Regular expression used to filter the translation when scanning for file mask. This can be used to limit the list of languages managed by Weblate (e.g. ^(cs|de|es)$ will include only these 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 in 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 following variables are available in the component 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
{{ filename }}
Transaltion filename
{{ stats }}
Translation stats, this has further attributes, examples below.
{{ 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 checks
{{ stats.allchecks_percent }}
Percent of strings with failing checks
{{ author }}
Author of current commit, available only in the commit scope.
{{ addon_name }}
Name of currently executed addon, available only in the addon commit message.

The following variables are available in the repository browser or editor templates:

{{branch}}
current branch
{{line}}
line in file
{{filename}}
filename, you can also strip leading parts using the parentdir filter, for example {{filename|parentdir}}

You can combine them with filters:

{{ component|title }}

You can use conditions:

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

There is additional tag available for replacing characters:

{% replace component "-" " " %}

You can combine it with filters:

{% replace component|capfirst "-" " " %}

There are also additional filter to manipulate with filenames:

Directory of a file: {{ filename|dirname }}
File without extension: {{ filename|stripext }}
File in parent dir: {{ filename|parentdir }}
It can be used multiple times:  {{ filename|parentdir|parentdir }}

…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:

Optimize configuration

The default configuration is useful for testing and debugging Weblate, while for a 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:

Check resource limits

If you are importing huge translations or repositories, you might be hit by resource limitations of your server.

  • Check the amount of free memory, having translation files cached by the operating system will greatly improve performance.
  • Disk operations might be bottleneck if there is a lot of strings to process - the disk is pushed by both Weblate and the database.
  • Additional CPU cores might help improve performance of background tasks (see Background tasks using Celery).

Disable unneeded checks

Some quality checks can be quite expensive, and if not needed, can save you some time during import if omitted. See CHECK_LIST for more info on how to configure this.

Automatic creation of components

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

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

For the management commands, you need to create a project which will contain all components and then run import_project or import_json.